Getting Too Old For This
by ManMadeofLasers
Summary: Immortality is a hell of a lot less fun than it sounds, especially when all you want is to be left alone but your conscience won't let you. Harry Potter and his usual bipolar luck live on into the 22nd century, his saving-people-thing meshing nicely with the galaxy's pressing need for a hero. Rated M for unrepentant coarse language, innuendo, and eventual sexy shenanigans
1. Chapter 1

**Akuze - 08.19.2177**

An injured, broken, and tired man sits on a massive tire at the edge of a settlement.

Not altogether unusual. It's a big universe after all, and between batarian slavers, murderous sentient computers, and asari-hanar pornography, there are a lot of things that could injure and break a man.

This sight was at least a little strange though, after all not many of the men in those scenarios would have some kind of sulphur based organic acid dripping from them, and if they did they certainly wouldn't appear as calm about it as this man did.

Beyond the man there were other things about the scenario that made it unique.

For one, the settlement behind him was entirely abandoned. From prefab roof to hastily dug and ceramacrete covered basement, every home and office was empty of any kind of human lifeform. Stranger still, there wasn't even any solid evidence that humans had been there in the first place. Sure it looked like any of a hundred other small colony sites, massive pre-fabricated buildings making up the bulk of the town, with small and somewhat crude ceramacrete structures built up around them, but it missed all the signs of actual habitation.

No lost teddy bears, porn hidden underneath bunks, or discarded ration wrappers, none of the classic signs that people lived there.

Of course that wasn't all.

Fires still burned in the broken hulks of two different tanks. The man suppressed a sigh. For all of the M29 Grizzly's vaunted history, and for all of the work he had put into making the damn things run better, they sure had gone down quickly.

He wasn't even sure what was still burning at this point.

A small command tent still mostly stood 500 meters out from where he sat, the kevlar-composite that made it up was shredded to high heaven but somehow still held it together. The other rapid deployment building, the man's now former barracks for the assignment, was less fortunate and was now a puddle of dissolved fibers and bodies.

Oh right, the bodies.

The man had evidently done a bit of cleanup. You could still smell the coppery tang of blood in the air, and if you looked closely there were still drying pools of it in the yellow clay of the field the colony town was built on.

Thirty seven body bags lay in neat rows before the man, a testament to not only how many had died, but also to the ten men and two women who weren't getting shipped home again.

That was all in the foreground. The backdrop for the whole depressing sight was a massive body, like some kind of demonically possessed snake, the body was nearly three and a half meters tall and was so long that the twenty meters of it still above ground was likely only the tip of the beast. The rest of the now corpse lay in the ground.

The head of the beast was a nightmare. Chitin scarred by chunks of metal shot at .05% of the speed of light made up most of it, but there were still exposed... sensory organs? The man had no idea what they were, only that they weren't exactly eyes, they started out blue, and when you sink a meter of sword into them the creature bearing them dies.

Shit, his sword.

The man stood up, and gently shook the cramps out of his body. The acid which had been pooling in some of the crevices of his armor finally got their chance to heed the call of gravity and fall off him, the dark green concentrate immediately burning through the thick rubber composite of the tire he'd been sitting on.

The man swiped a gauntlet through his hair, just messing the black bird's nest on top of his head up even more. He'd never given much thought to his appearance, but honestly he figured if someone was gonna judge him now they could just bugger right off.

Picking his way across the battlefield, the man crossed huge sections of disturbed ground, where the massive worm thing had burrowed, and he passed blackened scars shot into the ground by the grizzly's main guns. The chitinous shell of the best was caked in the moist dark yellow clay of the ground, each segment of the thing's natural armor collecting the dirt at their edges.

With a grunt the man hoisted himself onto one of the thing's massive claws, each shaped like a scythe from back in earth's old days, as if the thing was an old grain thresher. A part of him shuddered, it had cut through forty nine marine almost faster than they could react, maybe the idea of it being a thresher wasn't too far off.

Climbing to the top of the body, he made his way to the head, with its disturbingly blue tongue-thing and the also blue sensory tentacles and panels. Locating his prize, the man wrenched his weapon from the great beast's face.

Rubies gleamed at the base of the hilt and from the edges of the crossguard, the hilt itself depicted an aged man bearing a scroll in one hand and a sword in the other. Etched into the blade was a name so old it had truly been lost to time, even the society that spawned the sword could no longer truly recognize it for what it was, but the man knew. Godric Gryffindor.

Piercing green eyes looked down onto the blade, marveling again at its construction. He had first used the blade at the age of twelve, then killing another monster, startlingly similar to the one beneath his feet.

With another grunt he dropped back to the ground, and made his way to the barely functioning comm system to make sure the distress beacon was still sending its call out to the Alliance brass, and whoever else might be listening.

When he was sure the signal was still going out, the grumbling began, "...last god damn mission I let the send me on. 'Oh you saved Elysium, you broke the blitz, how can you say you're not qualified for this!' Take my commission and shove it so far up their asses they'll be coughing commendations for a month."

The man walked his way back to the tire he had been sitting on, only to find the acid from his armor had fairly neatly severed the chunk he had been sitting on clear off of the rest of the tire. Still grumbling he kicked the thing over, exposing the axle that had once connected it to one of the Grizzlys.

"Never should have given that stupid Shepard bint my real gods damned named. 'Oh hi I'm Harry Potter.' Bloody idiot."

He fell silent for a time.

"You leave earth and defy the ICW for what? To get your nice farm on the first world you've ever been on after Earth all shot up by a bunch of over evolved bird-men. And you gave your stupid bloody name to them at Shanxi, of course they would still have it on file, and of course she would bloody know it. Save one Merlin-be-damned colony from some stupid alien buggers and this is what you get."

The man shifted a bit on the tire, but no matter how he moved the severed chunk of axle just pressed uncomfortably into one of the butt plates on his armor. He kept shifting to find a comfortable spot, before giving it all up as a bad job after fifteen minutes. Standing with a scowl on his face, the man kicked the chuck of tire away and removed a pale wooden stick from what looked like a custom chamber in his gauntlet. With a quick swish a puffy leather chair appeared, straight from a catalog of the La-Z-Boy Interplanetary Trade Concern.

The man sunk back into it with a groan of comfort this time, giving his butt a bit of a wiggle to burrow himself further into its cushioned glory.

"Harry old boy, you have to pick a better bloody colony. You buy a farm on Shanxi, the turians hit it. You move to an apartment on Elysium, the batarians knock down your door the next year. You join up for a year, and you get a pair of platoons killed. Bloody hell man."

The man raised an arm, and an orange gauntlet of light formed around it. Manipulating the gauntlet of light with his off hand, images of a dozen worlds floated in front of his eyes.

"Amaterasu, Bekenstein, Freedom's Progress, Cuervo is nice this time of year. Huh."

The man scrolled through a dozen more world and codex entries before one caught his eye, a nice pastoral world, well developed, protected, and quiet. In a word, perfect. All he needed to just disappear for a bit, buy a nice place out on the edge of the capitol, raise sheep maybe.

The man set a number of financial extranet requests to run as soon as he neared the next comm buoy. If he was lucky they would all get cached in the buoy before the alliance saw fit to implement his retirement and they'd get processed at the military priority channels. He might have a nice place already waiting for him by the time he got off this forsaken rock and debriefed.

With a brief look at the rows of bodies in front of him, his eyes hardened. He had lost a lot of people in his time. You don't live for one hundred and ninety seven years and through innumerable uprisings, regime changes, and one outright interspecies war without having a few companions get lost along the way. Forty nine more men and women weren't that big of an extra weight on his conscience. This was why he hadn't wanted to sign up for service again. Sure, he did good work, he helped people, but he had a long and storied history of being the one man out of an investigative force of fifty to survive an ambush.

He sighed.

"Eden prime, here I come."

* * *

><p><strong>Eden Prime - 06.02.2183<strong>

Harry James Potter, only son of James Charlus Potter and Lily Marie Evans, Boy-who-Lived, Man-Who-Won, Last of the Potters, former auror, former Director of Magical Law enforcement, alleged Dark Lord, four time Gold Medal winning champion bobsledder, Master of Death, and current chief gardener of Eden Prime's Planetary Council Manor stood on the porch of his home, looking out at the grounds of the estate he had purchased.

From his porch he could usually see the barest edge of the capital's spaceport, which he had spent many relaxing nights admiring behind a silencing charm. The take-offs and drop-offs tended to be noisy as all hell, but beautiful.

Right now all he could see is what looked like the bastard offspring of an Asari dreadnaught and an old-earth cuttlefish stepping all over his goddamn land and leaving massive bloody footprints. It also seemed to be dropping massive waves of bipedal machines, which an idle part of his mind noted looked a lot like a race of pissed off flashlights.

"God damn it."


	2. Chapter 2

**Elysium - 07.13.2176**

"FUCK! FUCK! SHIT! ARSE! DAMNATION AND HELLFIRE FUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

A high whine filled the stale air in the hallway of the prefab apartment, punctuated 750 times a minute by the staccato rhythm of a seriously pissed off Batarain firing an M96 Mattock. Harry clutched a moist towel to his otherwise naked form and ran for his life through the hall of his place.

"COME BACK HERE YOU FILTHY APE!"

If he had more time the irony of that statement would have amused him, but as it stood Harry's eyes could not widen further as he sprinted through his server room into the second half of his home. His neighbors made fun of him for buying two pre-fabs next to one another and making it one big unit, but who was laughing now Gurdlesons? Shaking soap from his head Harry dived over his bed and began furiously searching for something.

Above his bed the nice photo he had framed of his farm on Shanxi shattered as another hyper accelerated metal pellet was fired through a wall into his room.

"Come on you asshat! That's the only copy of that photo I have!"

From the other side of his bed and just outside the door to his room a deep and gravelly response came, "It won't matter much WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, APE!"

Harry shifted a pile of shirts to the side, promising himself for the hundredth time to actually use his laundry basket, and underneath it was the sight he had been dying to see since his shower had been so rudely interrupted not five minutes ago. His wand.

With a smile on his face he took better cover against his bed and yelled "_Kontakte Lyn!"_

A beam of raw electrical power shot from the thin elder wand, hitting the Batarian's assault rifle and arcing to his body, frying the four eyed man from the inside out. The alien collapsed where he stood, steam rising from his body.

The smell left Harry feeling hungry for some reason, which made him feel a little guilty for some reason.

Shaking his head to drive the full set of weirdness from his mind, Harry calmly finished drying himself and put on his clothes. He hoped, he _really_ hoped, that some Batarian had just gotten drunk and decided the wall leading into his bathroom was too structurally sound and really needed a hole.

He knew that wasn't the case, but a man could dream.

/-/

Harry stood one step away from his door with his eyes closed. His set of prefab apartments connected with a large number of others, the buildings were all made modular so they could be separated by miles to form outposts and farmhouses, or they could be stacked on top of each other like the complex he lived in.

Harry hesitated.

He knew there was trouble. He knew that is was too late to avert it, so he was now going to have to go into battle. Again. But he was one step out from his door. Harry had cast selective silencing charms around his place that kept all of the louder noises of the city out. The ward line for his charms was at two steps. Just one more and he would hear it. Then he would start running, and he would find a gun, and he would track down the nearest Alliance police substation and he would kill and save and it wouldn't be enough because he'd been doing this for over a century now and it was never bloody enough.

Harry Potter was so tired.

He moved another step out.

Gun fire: rate of fire and tonal volume suggest widely varying number of calibers and manufacturers.

Engine noises: similar level of variance.

Screaming: Too much. Regimented military strike would silence their targets if not kill them, too many and too consistent indicating screams were an objective not a secondary effect.

It struck a chord in him. He knew this style. Death eaters had used it often enough. These were terrorists, and at this day in age (and given a bloody Batarian had shown up in his bath) that meant slavers.

He _really_ fucking hated slavers.

/-/

Two days later Harry held a rifle to his shoulder and popped up from behind a makeshift barrier. He'd honestly never thought he'd be thankful for crashed air cars after Shanxi, but here one was, saving his life again.

Shots hit and shattered against the barrier next to hit, micro fragments blasting the edge of his shields and making the kinetic barriers around him light up for a moment. One shot into the visor of what he was pretty sure was one of their captains, double tap into the exposed shoulder joint of the VORCHA WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER- OH SHIT!

The rocket passed within two feet of him, but thankfully went high, a thin off-white contrail following it as it passed Harry, the barrier, the local defense militia he had supporting him, and impacted on the face of the building at the end of the crossroads. Chunks of burnt and crushed ceramacrete fell off of the building's facade and hit the ground, scaring even more of the life out of the line of civilians Harry was protecting.

He barely noticed any of that, his mind still reeling with disbelief that someone would give a Vorcha a rocket launcher. They very nearly did not qualify for self-awareness, giving one high explosives was just asking for a problem. Especially given that he just took its arm out of commission, actually-

A boom reverberated deep in Harry's chest, shaking the building all around the battlefield and dislodging even more chunks of facade from the surrounding structures.

Harry locked eyes with one of the local deputies and waved him back to the crowd of civilians crossing the street. They needed to get six more blocks over to get to the bunker, Harry was just grateful no one had seen fit to re-purpose that holdover from the colony's early and more paranoid days.

Risking a glance over the barrier, Harry saw exactly what he had hoped to see, the Vorcha had tried to fire again with its off hand and managed to fire a rocket point bank into the Batarian immediately to its right. The whole battle line he had been holding off was in disarray.

"_Confrigissimo!"_

The good old siege engine. A thick bar of butter yellow light sprang from the wand he had drawn in his off hand and impacted a small clearing about five meters back from the cover most of the Batarians were using. The light hit the ground with all of the grace and kinetic energy of an old earth rail-train, blowing a half meter deep crater in the ground and the Batarian line into further chaos.

Harry took a breath and rested his rifle on the car he was hiding behind. Using it to steady his aim, sixteen shots cleared the skirmish line and gave their sector some relief.

"Kalinowski!"

One of the generic blue armored men that was helping the line of retreating civvies turned around and looked at harry.

"Grab three and go police their side. Looks mostly clear, but watch your ass! There might be some heavy ordinance over there, salvage all you can."

Harry got a salute in response and the man motioned to a few of the other armored men, going off to follow Harry's orders. They had doubted him at first, but the sixth or seventh Batarian he killed had convinced the local authorities that he knew what he was doing.

Harry poked around his omni-tool and tied himself back into the local tactical net.

"Sector Report!"

The map of the route to the closest bunker lit up in sections, green across the board. What actual marines and fighters that had been in the city gathered at the city's edge holding off most of the forces, Harry deliberately placed himself nearest that front guessing that way he'd catch the bulk of the forces.

It looked like he was right.

Taking a breath, Harry took a swig from a canteen he had filled at some point. One lieutenant Shepard was leading the marines at the battle front, and had proven to be both a blessing and a curse. She had been all kinds of annoying about the chain of command and where a random civvie (in her opinion, Harry scoffed, he'd been fighting evil since before her grandmother lost her virginity) stood in it.

It was almost enough to make him nostalgic for the old days, when all he had to do was say 'I'm Harry Potter' to get put in charge.

Kalinowski didn't sound like he had gotten shot yet, so it seemed like the sector was still clear. Harry idly summoned a ration bar from the small pile the locals and he had kept, and after shredding the wrapper began munching.

"SHEPARD TO POTTER, SHEPARD TO POTTER, OVER!"

Harry winced and suppressed the urge to just remove his communicator.

"This is Potter, what do you need? Over."

"YOUR ASS OUT HERE PRONTO-"

The transmission was interrupted by what sounding like a rather large explosion, and fire from a high caliber cannon.

"-HALIAT IS BACK, AND HE GOT HIS DAMN GUNSHIP BACK IN THE AIR!"

Harry took a moment to splash some water from his canteen onto his face. The last time that damn Batarian showed up with his gunship the front had almost collapsed, he needed to get out there now. He could be spared since it looked like the retreat was mostly clear.

"Kalinowski! You got a launcher for me?"

Harry groaned and stood to see if they had found anything.

"Found one uncracked right here, only the one shot in the barrel though, everything else went up with the rest of this stuff."

Harry jumped the barrier and collected the launcher, and once he had it he slapped the guy on the shoulder.

"Watch'em for me, radio if it gets bad, hopefully I'll be back in a few hours."

/-/

With his last orders given, Harry turned and began jogging towards Shepard's last position. Apparating was well and good, but in a battle he would just pop in front of a bullet and end his streak of not dying. He was getting pretty good at it and he would feel terrible if he lost his record here.

The gunship the Batarian commander was using looked like the rest of the soldiers on the front felt. Scrap metal made up most of the thing's tail and fuselage, and unless Harry's eyes were deceiving him, there was definitely an old fashion metal stop sign making up the bulk of the thing's right stabilizer.

Where in the hell did that Batarian son of a varren get an actual metal stop sign? There were probably only like two of those in existence in the nearest like thousand light years. There _may _have been one in the Elysium Museum of Humanity, but only tourists went there and...

Wait.

That fucker broke into the museum and stole a god damn stop sign!

Harry had no idea why that pissed him off so much, especially in comparison to the sat images they had of the few hundred men and women the Batarians had in camps behind their side of the front. A detached and analytical part of Harry's mind noted that he had been pretty close to a number of explosions in the last forty eight hours, and there was that time he got surprised and hit by that Vorcha's submission net...

Regardless of why, Harry raised the foraged launcher to his shoulder and activated the flight control VI. A small and pissed of caricature of a Vorcha face appeared in the holographic crosshairs, and it began barking out instructions for a successful launch in Batarian. Harry was just thankful he'd used ML77 launchers before.

Elanos Haliat, the Batarian leading the raid on Elysium, juked the ship constantly side to side. The combined fire from everyone on the line not focusing on the incoming ground forces was slowly degrading his shield integrity, but if he kept mobile is wasn't enough to slow him down.

Right up until a 22.5 millimeter rocket power projectile impacted the port stabilizer that had been giving him so much trouble. His shield held, but the full kinetic energy of the blast couldn't be diverted, resulting in the flash welds failing and the stabilizer falling apart.

Haliat watched the results of the impact, helpless in the cockpit. He had no idea why his personal slave had been so adamant that they use that particular hunk of metal from the foolish ape's museum. He hadn't cared. He let the slave do as it wanted, and then flashed twenty minutes worth of torture into the wretch for completing the repairs so slowly.

Without the stabilizer the craft was unbalanced, incorrect airflow over the wing, and more importantly the now incorrect balance of the craft in relation to its mass effect core, _could_ theoretically be compensated for by an experienced pilot. Elanos Haliat was more of a slave master than an experienced pilot.

The gunship fell from the sky in an elaborate death spiral, its path marked by smoke and vaporized eezo expelled by its overworked and unbalanced core. It hit the ground and its core fully overloaded, causing a blue/white explosion and raising a ragged cheer from the line of defenders hiding behind sections of broken building. Repurposed cargo containers and burning air cars.

Most of the defenders had been manning the rough line at the edge of the city proper since the battle started, most hadn't slept in that time. With the crash of the gunship that had been harassing them on and off for the whole battle, their morale shot up and their battle cries filled the air.

It started with one Batarian, Belrah Habaat. He looked at the screaming and triumphant humans that he'd been shooting for two solar days, and he thought of his mate Sedd back in the barracks on Aratoht. Sure, they didn't have much, but a bed to share and a domestic slave was a hell of a lot better than being dead. He dropped his rifle when he thought that none of the others were looking, and just began making his way back to their shuttles.

It was only moments before the defenders began firing again, hearten by the distinct lack of giant flying machines shooting at them. More Batarians were cut down by the ranks of Humans firing back at them, and after less than a minute more than a score of the attacking slavers dropped their weapons and retreated like Habaat.

The attacking battle group was now entirely without a leader, and when the main front countered by Lieutenant Shepard and Harry broke the secondary fronts across the city soon broke as well. The ground war broke in the defender's favor, and the few Batarian ships in orbit suddenly had dozens of shuttle to cover in addition to their own asses. Alliance reinforcements that were blocked by those same cruisers in orbit found their traffic lanes cleared in a matter of minutes, and the entire attacking force found itself routed and streaming atmosphere from their hulls as they retreated back behind the relay in less than four hours.

The siege of Elysium was broken.

* * *

><p><strong>Arcturus station - 05.16.2183<strong>

Udina sat fully back into his chair, a datapad with the report he had been looking for clutched uselessly in one hand.

"Well I didn't expect that. We recruited this Potter then?"

"For a time. You have to understand, he isn't exactly a normal recruit here. Even for other people in his position, they'd have to go through basic and officer training, we'd do background checks and the like."

"What was the problem, I mean I have a report here of his actions on Shanxi. He has at least two incidents of extraordinary valor under fire, what was the problem?"

Anderson shook his head on the other side of the table.

"That's exactly it, his history, what there is of it in our records, is filled with this kind of thing. He was at the site of seven of the twelve largest terrorist attacks all across earth from 2020 until the founding of the Systems Alliance. The boy has no identification, no education, no jobs, or even any tax records. The only places the name Harry Potter crops up is at the sites of disasters, and in the context of a civilian that was far and away more competent than the local authorities. Udina, literally all we knew about this man is that he's older than any human has any right to be, and he's saved hundreds of lives."

Donnel scrubbed a hand across his face, and looked down at the datapad.

"That was when we gave him this commission then? The commission that lead to Akuze?"

"Yes, that was what led to the end of our interactions, anyway."

* * *

><p>[AN]: Hey guys. So I picked up a new writing project (this one), and I hope I can keep it going pretty well. Essentially I've run out of good Harry Potter fanfics to read, and then I ran out of good Mass Effect, Warhammer 40K, Halo, and any other story line I was interested in. Then I started looking at crossovers, and low and behold, some of the best were combinations of my favorite stories, but of course the fan base here is a lot more limited so almost all of them are incomplete. This lead to the same thing reading just Harry Potter fanfic did, essentially me thinking I could do better than some of the things I've seen, and wanting to write a full story so that there would be something complete out there.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I have only loose plans at this stage, so I hope you like where I am going. The plan is for the next few chapters to continue setting Harry's scene. I enjoyed the idea from another fic of Harry being present for all of the lead up events (i.e. the war hero, sole survivor, and ruthless things) and then his name being put forward as the candidate. Its an idea I've canabalised from The Green Eyed Spectre (which I suggest you all read), so credit for the idea goes to greggsmk.


	3. Chapter 3

[A/N]: Hey everyone, this is the last chapter of Getting Too Old For This until I get another out for Master of Luck. I'm probably going to be alternating until I finish. This chapter is going to be the last window into Harry's past for a little while, and it will showcase a bit more of Harry's skill. Long term Harry will prove to be a jack of all trades. Expect over-powered bullshit, more profanity, and likely more references to hanar and pornography. All I can say in my defense is that Harry has had nearly two centuries to learn the skills he will be using, I enjoy cursing, and the idea of hanar pornography is really funny to me for some reason.

We'll be breaking into ME1's events shortly and later on we'll cover the significant historical events I've hinted at and not discussed here, things like his actions on Shanxi and what happened between him and the ICW. I hope you continue to enjoy, and for the love of god please let me know if what I'm writing is too incomprehensible.

[A/N 2]:Crucial side note! The timeline is jumping around at most of the page breaks. I thought it was clear but a reviewer brought up that it may not be. I trusted y'all to think it through, but in case it is not clear I'll be adding in location/date markers.

* * *

><p><strong>Arcturus station - 05.16.2138<strong>

"The end of our interactions?"

"Donnel, we're in a corner here or I wouldn't be suggesting this. Harry Potter and the alliance aren't on good terms. From what we got from his time with us that may not be entirely our fault, he has a lot of poorly repressed anger for some kind of governing body called the ICW, but there were some unkind words after Akuze."

"Anderson, we work for a multi-planetary, multi-quadrillion credit government. Unkind words?"

The military man leaned as far back in his chair as he could get and suppressed the urge to face palm.

"You don't recall _anything_ after Akuze that might be politely described as unkind words?"

"NO."

David Anderson gave up and did face palm.

"Yes. We still have no idea how it happened. You of all people know how much we spend on cyber security."

Humanity's ambassador to the stars, Donnel Udina, leaned forward in his chair and very nearly shouted, "Harry Potter was the one who replaced every alliance extranet site with alternating frames of kitten pictures and screen grabs from HARDCORE ELCOR-HANAR FORNAX VIDS?"

Anderson was hard pressed to both nod and maintain any kind of dignity in the meeting.

"And you want this man to be our proposal for the specters? This man? Anderson, are you insane?

Anderson's voice was filled with hesitation.

"No one can argue with his military record..?"

"No!"

"Okay Udina, listen to me for a second here. We have no one who has all the requisite skills. A few are close, but look at what this guy has: our after-action report from Akuze shows he essentially killed a thresher maw with a sword, his... prank... on us shows that he either has contacts or personally can hack his way through the alliance public firewalls, and what he did with General William's command codes on Shanxi shows he can command effectively in space."

"Do you have any idea how much heat the embassy got when all of our extranet contacts received PORNOGRAPHY when they tried to contact us? In the weeks following that event our standard recruitment rates dove by 44% from the public outcry!"

"Now wait a minute, after that dive they rose above where they were and stayed there for a year because the extranet decided the alliance had a sense of humor, I've seen those figures."

Donnel crossed his arms and looked out the window behind him, in a small voice he said "Councilor Sparatus still calls me the ambassador of the extranet in closed sessions..."

A lifetime of rigorous military training was all that stood between Anderson and laughter, and it almost wasn't enough. He thanked the wisdom of the sergeant that got him through basic for extolling the virtues of superior positioning, sitting across from Udina and one seat down meant his massive smile wasn't captured in the reflections Udina could see.

"Okay. So no one can argue with his record. And I can see why we didn't just throw him in a penal colony in the traverse. What makes you think he would even consent to this?"

Anderson's face immediately went back to professional as Udina turned back around.

"That is actually the single thing I am most certain of. If there are two things about this man that his psyche profile shows, it's that he wants to help people, and he wants to keep out of the public eye. The Special Tactics and Reconnaissance section of the citadel automatically covers any and all specter interactions under the umbrella of galactic security, and he gets legal carte blanche to address any perceived legal or moral inadequacy. the citadel council will protect his personal security, and he can do whatever he wants to help people. If we sell it to him like that, we win."

"We win a man that appears to be a literal loose cannon."

"You're missing part two of this idea, namely that at no point do we ever leave him alone to make any decisions in a vacuum. We assign him a minder."

Anderson looked through his scattered datapads, until he found one and passed its info to Udina.

"Look, our top two were Shepard, N7, and that K7, Brower. Shepard would be perfect if she had more experience, so unless you want Brower more, we can take her along with and make her the connection back to the alliance."

Udina looked back through the Potter files and the combat record for Jane Shepard. His head bobbed left and right slightly, clearly weighing the options.

Anderson knew how repellent this idea was to Udina personally, Sparatus was an ass after all and Anderson would have already shot him if he had to work with him day-to-day, but Udina was good enough to see why this was a good idea. Potter's data showed that he would either bring down the Alliance or he would single handedly get them a spot on the council, and given the literally thousands of lives they could trace to having been saved by him, Anderson knew where he would put his money.

It helped that he had met Potter once, when he rejected his commission and before the extranet incident.

* * *

><p><strong>Akuze - 08.21.2177<strong>

David Anderson looked over the shoulder of the pilot in his personal Kodiak. Technically speaking, Alliance Regs held that any and all passengers should be securely in the cargo compartment while the pilot's section should be sealed shut, but Anderson had never been big on following all of the regs. Looking over the pilot's shoulder gave one visual access to the sensor suite of the shuttle and the ability to make better on the spot judgments, or so he told himself. Whether or not he had complete faith in his pilot was another thing.

In this case he was glad he made it his practice, if only to save the pilot from having to radio the scene to him. He had a feeling getting sent to retrieve the marines on Akuze was going to be bad. Confirmation of his suspicions had never been less satisfying.

Some kind of massive... well... sandworm looking thing was half out of the clay next to the settlement on Akuze, and laid out in neat rows near the sandworm were a lot of bodies. In fact there wasn't any movement except the flapping of a busted up rapid deployment command tent.

they had lost contact with the colonials, but in a strange turn of events they had lost contact in the middle of their quarterly report to the Systems Alliance. Akuze was on good terms with Earth and the Alliance, so there was no reason for the communications to just drop, they were still getting aid after all. The marines had been sent in to investigate. That had been two days ago, and after a tech took a second look at the message, he was tasked with what they now knew to be a rescue.

The encryption of the comm channel that had cut off had been rough to establish, but no one had thought anything of it. When analyzed, they realized that it was because the other end on Akuze didn't have the other half of the normal encrypted Alliance handshake protocol. It had been hard to establish because the other end had been a VI tasked with maintaining the link until whoever was running it could break down what they were being sent.

Now it looked like they were too late.

With a gesture and a shared HUD marker Anderson indicated where they should be setting down, and he left the pilot's compartment.

His men in the transport section all looked grim. They knew the score, he did his briefings thoroughly after all. His own grim expression informed theirs.

The shuttle jolted slightly as it set down, all of the men in the transport bay absorbing the impact in their knees. They were a well-trained bunch, and Anderson had to take a moment to appreciate the coordination of it.

The pilot opened the bay door and the men all stepped off, automatically covering all the angles and spreading out artfully to ensure clean fields of fire. Anderson appreciated their diligence, but what he saw with his own eyes was a bit different than what the sensors reported. In the barely held together husk of the command tent there was clearly a man sitting in what looked like a top of the line La-Z boy and attempting to put together a ground-to-buoy comm system.

As his men continued to spread out, and clear the area, one peeled off to follow him as he approached the man sheltered in the tent.

He looked dirty and more than a little beat up. His armor had a massive cut across the chest, going straight through the plate and down to the skin tight under layer. It looked like the blow hadn't pierced the under layer, but Anderson almost didn't want to know what happened to cut through mark ten Ursa armor like that. IT was the best stock armor the alliance supplied, and did not bode well.

"Soldier, report."

It was an order, but Anderson didn't have the heart to make it sound like one. The guy earned a break, he had clearly bagged and tagged thirty seven of his own men after defeating the literal monster outside.

A hand holding a flash formed TTAP screw driver idly brushed long black hair off the man's forehead, revealing an old scar in the shape of a lightning bolt. Anderson sensed a story there, but that was definitely for another time.

"Report, eh?" the man didn't bother looking up, "Look behind you, you bloody pillock. The whole thing was a damn set-up. I'm the only bloody survivor. I've been working on this bloody radio for two days, I'm about to bloody finish, and you bloody fools show up."

The marine he had with him poorly suppressed an aggressive frown. David suspected that only the fact that nothing in the alliance standard codex explained the monstrosity outside kept that reaction from being more physical than facial.

"Let's start with your name, soldier."

Without missing a beat, and still mid-repair, "Potter, Harry J. Temporary lieutenant commander in charge of colonial response force tasked with determining what happen to the human colony on the world designated Akuze. The short version, we were bloody well ambushed by that thing out there."

"And the long version, Potter, Harry J?"

The man looked up and dangerous green eyes met his own, "The long fucking version is that this whole fucking mission was some kind of fucking set up! There's nothing out there but a bunch of mint condition prefabs and ceramacrete! We were lured here by some dumb-ass signal and now forty nine fucking people are dead! What do you think the long version is! Who in the hell even knows what happened to the colonists!"

The raw anger in the man's voice had Anderson reaching for his side arm out of instinct, he put a placating hand forward as the man finished screwing in a panel and began flash forming a set of wires with him omni-tool.

"This isn't our fault here, calm down, we're just your relief."

That had the man actually pause, "My relief!? MY RELIEF!? So you AREN'T from the cruiser that's been faffing about on the dark side of the bloody planet? How long did they take to authenticate the colony's signal, hmm? I trust a fucking politician again, and now I'm sitting on forty nine god damn graves. It's like the bombing at Rio or the London Olympics all over again!"

The wires he was forming met contacts that had been scoured and prepared on both side of the device he was working on, a screen lit up on a fold out section and displayed the startup screen of an operating system Anderson wasn't familiar with. Characters that looked like cuneiform ran across the screen and Potter began typing something out.

"Do you know their names?," Potter pointed to the body bags with one hand while he manipulated the holo-keyboard with the other, "Or how many fucking people were supposed to have been here? I need a god damn extranet connection, thank fuck this bloody thing is up now... Fortak better be online I know he'll know and I can send him this work up so he can..."

The man just continued rambling underneath his breath.

Anderson sighed.

This kind of thing was distressingly common in the galaxy. It was just a shame that this time it claimed a colony and the lives of forty nine marines. Fifty if the incoherent rambling of the man in front of him was anything to go by. PTSD claimed more people...

At least this Potter character couldn't do any damage with a probably poorly repaired comm unit. He turned around and looked at the marine with him, "Keep an eye on him."

Walking out to the rows of bodies, he got a better look at the monster. Anderson grabbed reference pictures from a number of angles and in particular he grabbed as many shots as he could of the exposed acid sacs. At least he guessed it was acid. It melted through the barrel of one of his men's guns quickly enough.

He patched himself into the shuttle comm and used that as a relay to get him to the local comm buoy and galactic network. Running an image search through the standard galactic codex based on the set he took came up with a huge amount of extranet hits to domains he knew to belong to conspiracy theorists, along with a name. Translated into English: Thresher Maw. In Asari it was a lot more poetic, but that was those crazy monogenders for you.

Looking at the thing's massive scythe arms, he could see it.

With a burst of static his comm lit up, "Commander, you should come back and see this, I don't know what this Potter guy is up to, but I'm pretty certain it breaks standard Citadel comm protocols."

Anderson swept his gaze across the field. Two of his men were confirming identities and moving the body bags, two more were taking samples off the thresher maw while the extra was still on Potter. His remaining fire team had gone off into the colony buildings.

They did good work.

With a sigh he moved back to the command tent, only to find a massive holo-projection filling the tent and Harry explaining the detailed plot of the planet and surrounding space to his marine.

"-then you trace the signal bounce, like using the tracert command on an old earth network before Google set up the world-cloud satellite group. Of course Google eventually merged with that asteroid mining company, then the old UN split it all up under the pretense of monopoly breaking," Potter stared off into the distance for a moment and scrunched his forehead, "Merlin, I'm old."

Before Anderson could ask him to put down the computer before he hurt himself and come with him to meet the nice men with the long-sleeve white jackets, he continued on.

"Anyway, you fire the signal off through as many locations as you can, and since all spaceships are hardwired to pass along maydays you can monitor the lag times between nodes, plot them assuming a signal transit just short of the speed of light and look for a series of distances that all triangulate to the same locus, aaaand... bob's your uncle."

With a self-satisfied expression, the temporary lieutenant commander added a number of lines to his holo and managed to plot the location of what had to be a ship that Anderson had not seen coming down. One where he had mentioned it being before, on the dark side of the planet, and squarely outside any sensor range that Anderson had access to as he entered the system and as his cruiser orbited above them.

David hadn't followed all of Potter's rant, but if that meant what he thought it did-

"-Of course that is only step one. We have a locus, dear friends, and as useful as that is it doesn't give us anything substantial. Instead what you can do is use the trace information to find the emergency frequency of the repeater at that location. If they are worth their salt, they'll rotate their frequency so you can't do what we want to do, but if _you're _worth yours then you'll have tracked the location from a few hundred points so you can run a few identification algorithms on the data you have, figure out the equation they're using to pick the next frequency-"

Yeah, Anderson was lost again, but he did his best to figure out where this Potter guy was going conceptually, and how in the hell he had managed to make a comm machine with the specs required to do half of what he was doing.

"-and as my dear friend Fortak would say, theres the pyjack now! They, of course, deflect my attempt to crack into their systems from the hardwired emergency beacon, BUT I KNEW THEY WOULD DO THAT!" a wild look entered Harry's eyes, more madness now than when Anderson thought he was just an angry PTSD sufferer, "And because I knew it, I can use this chance to grab and analyze a section of their counter intrusion code! Now as everyone knows, counter intrusion is one of the most contentious issues in modern computing, so as it develops different schools of thought emerge, each of which leaves a distinct signature on how they fight you out of their system. So you take their code segment, run a few thousand simulations, and compare it to known results from previous hack attempts all of which you can find on the extranet if you know where to look, and bob's your aunt this time, we get ALLIANCE BLACK-OPS CODES!"

Anderson's omni-tool lit up as a massive amount of data began downloading to his local storage, the holo-interface activating while his arm was folded across his chest, unbalancing him as the sonic field emitters in his omni-tool forced his arms apart and forced his chest back.

Almost at the same time as the foreign data flooded his system, Anderson's armor comm system began blaring warnings as delayed mayday calls came from each of his men, their shuttle, every armor comm unit in the cruiser overhead, and the cruiser itself.

Potter had the grace to look bashful. At least for a moment. Then the madness and sarcasm came back in.

"Now that you know who is responsible, or at least you have all the data to figure it out when you pass it off to your analysts, I'm afraid I must insist that you take me to your leader."

David Anderson may have been ranked N7 for most of his military career, but there wasn't a lot anyone could do in the face of twelve terabytes of hastily conjured 'proof', mayday calls from every communication system inside the entire local heliopause, and the corpse of a thresher maw. It was understandable then, that he accidentally played into Harry's hand by asking him in the most annoyed tone he could muster, "Why, what could you possibly have to say to my leader?"

A smile filled the other man's face, completely at odds with the rage, uncertainty, and insanity that had been there previously.

"What I have to say is quite simple: Fuck you and the mustache you rode in on, I quit."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

**Arcturus station - 05.16.2183**

"I don't like this. I don't like that this is our best option. If Shepard or Brower's records looked even the slightest bit better, we wouldn't even be discussing this. I would even take a C rating over this Potter, and you know the issues I've had with command and control specialists."

Udina was trying to look intensely into Anderson's eyes. He was trying really hard to make his point, and he was clearly thinking about using the intensity of his eyes to do so.

David once had to look Admiral Steven Hackett in the eye and tell him that Potter had rejected his commission and asked that he 'fucked himself and the mustache he rode in on'.

Udina's 'intensity' didn't even rate in his top ten.

"I know you're uncomfortable with this, but Potter is head and shoulders above all of our other options. Of all of humanity's armed forces, he stands the best chance of being accepted in the spectres on his own merits without any human political concerns highlighting his potential."

"I know that!" Udina transferred his intensity to his volume, "But look at what he's already done to humanity's image on a galactic scale!"

"Yes, look! What do you think would happen if we had lost Shanxi? You've been briefed on the Turian's tactical position! What if Potter hadn't stolen those codes and Williams had surrendered like his after action report said?"

Anderson allowed a moment for his own voice to override the politician's in the conversation.

"Our species entered the galactic community from a position of strength. No one can question our strength, the Turians were the most significant military force in the galaxy and after their 'relay 314 incident' we walked out onto the galactic scene bargaining from a position of strength. That was his fault, and what's more he did it because he liked his neighbors and wasn't willing to be invaded over a misunderstanding."

The bad taste in Udina's mouth was visible, but like David thought, he was too good at his job to not be able to put his personal distaste away in favor of what had to be the truth. Say what you will about humanity, but after over two thousand one hundred and fifty years of history, we finally figured out how to appoint our political animals.

"Where is he these days? If he gave up his commission we don't have him on staff, so where did he go?"

Anderson finally had information worth a genuine smile, "Get this, he already lives on Eden Prime."

Donnel Udina took himself seriously, and he took his job seriously. Humanity, his species, his genetic identity, was worth respect. Every moment of his life spent on the Citadel and in the halls of Jump Zero, Arcturus station, and every other human or alien held piece of ground, he tried to live up to that identity.

So when he slouched down in his chair across the conference table from Commander David Anderson, it was with a sense of both relief and defeat.

"At least we have that going for us."

/-/

**Eden Prime - 06.02.2183**

Harry looked out at the stunning vista of his land, before looking back at his house which was filled with a large number of passed out bodies and empty glass jars that used to be filled with the finest alcohols ever produced by the stills in his neighbor's shed.

This what he got for throwing parties.

He had paid through his merlin-be-damned nose for his land. Of course his money had originally been in galleons, which he had then converted to pounds sterling, and then after about the mid-2160s converted again to galactic standard credits through an intermediary back on Earth.

Eden prime was easily humanity's most beautiful colony world, and one of the first, so it was among the most expensive. The land cost him a couple thousand credits a hectare, and he owned about sixty-five hundred.

He felt his anger was understandable in this case, when a fucking super-dreadnaught falls out of the damn sky, puts massive holes in his land, and drops a few hundred walking flashlights, which proceed to start shooting people.

Harry paused to consider if he had the time to make coffee before dealing with whatever was happening on his god damned planet, but the sound of gunfire from far off pierced the silencing charm he cast the night before around his house and the hangover induced haze between his ears.

Looking back out at the developing conflict outside, Harry looked to the sky and shook his fist, "Every bloody time, you bastards? EVERY BLOODY TIME!"

It wasn't worth bothering. This made the third colony he tried to settle on that turned around on him. Maybe he should just sell his land again and buy a ship? Overriding docking protocols to board his ship had to be harder than just landing a merlin damned ship or fleet on his fucking planet.

Harry sighed in disgust. He'd deal with it later.

Turning from his porch, he made his way back through the wreckage of the party from the day before. Harry always kept a pretty active academic presence on the extranet, over a century of friendship with the first person he had ever really saved having rubbed off on him. So when a bunch of humanity's finest prothean experts all showed up on his planet, he naturally found his way to their dig site and got most of them to come to his place.

From there it had gone downhill.

The Ayyangar clan that owned and lived in the plot of land next to his were a bunch of serious partiers, and when they noticed that he had about thirty people over, a delegation had shown up on his door with the products of the still they ran.

If there was one thing Harry loved about colonial worlds, it was the relaxed liquor laws.

The gathering proceeded to get wild, Harry's attention sort of drifting off when one of the more comely female archaeologists decided that she needed to prove that lap dances paid her way through Oxford's British Columbian program.

Now he stepped through a mass of ethnically Indian bodies and half-naked experts on all things prothean.

He always kept a fully serviced set of whatever Hanhe-Kedar's latest offering was in his closet. He may not have liked his luck, but Harry James Potter would be damned if he wasn't prepared for it.

When he had fully suited up, Harry went to the kitchen and grabbed a sandwich from his icebox, and headed out. Janelle Sharber, who led the circuit analysis team for the prothean beacon they found, was somehow already awake at the island in his kitchen. He raided his ice box again before heading out to his destiny, and as he left she gave him a bit of a wave before returning her hung over head to her hands.

Merlin, did he love hot chicks, ones with degrees were even better. If that was how they made them back at Cornell on Earth, he may have to chance his magic in going back. It was depressing that he had a century on them, but such was life.

Harry shook his head, things to do. Gunfire should really rank higher on his priority list, but ten minutes with a hot and hung-over electrical engineer was worth it to him. Gods above, he was jaded.

/-/

**Leaving close orbit of Mass Relay in Eden Prime system - 06.02.2183**

"Bring us in fast and quiet. This just got a lot more complicated."

When Joker acknowledged, David Anderson closed the channel and shortly thereafter his eyes. A headache sprang up from behind his eyes, making him pinch the bridge of his nose in the hope that it would go away.

The council had been shown Potter's record, and they seemed uncharacteristically enthused. Councilor Sparatus in particular seemed caught between appreciation of the man's martial, technical, and social skills, and anger that Potter would have made terrible Turian.

With hardly any formal debate they saw fit to dispatch Nihlus Kyrik, one of the protégés of their top spectre, Saren Arterius. David's uncertainty had increased exponentially on that revelation, but after several standard days' worth of space travel with the man, Nihilus had turned out to be nothing like his mentor.

Once upon a time, David Anderson had been in the position he and Udina were going to put Potter in. Saren had been his evaluating agent, and by the end of the mission a building of dock workers were dead and more than twice that number had to deal with lethal concentrations of element zero.

Anderson did not become a spectre.

At this stage none of that ranked in his top ten concerns though.

Communications from Eden Prime showed some kind of massive invasion. Helmet cams and other video data confirmed the same. The true problem came from the gravimetric data coming from around the dig site they were headed for.

Microgravity detection was useful for spotting planetary features, and in this case showed an immense mass effect field covering a mass that was many times that of even Arcturus Station.

Reports came pouring in from across the capitol city of Constant, only to drop into incoherence and then stop entirely. Anderson and Nihlus both poured through the immediate retorts as Joker made best time for the surface.

"How will we find this Potter? Picking up your people's beacon is priority, but with the colony in such disarray what is the plan?"

Anderson pulled up the Alliance tax records he had been given access to and overlaid that on the surface images his ship had taken since passing through the relay.

"Records show that Harry bought a big chunk of land on the outskirts of the capitol here," he said dropping a waypoint, "Whatever is causing the interference in the reports we're getting from the planet is coming from here, " he said, highlighting a large area near the prothean beacons dig site and Harry's land.

Anderson turned to meet the Turians eye, "If the situation planet-side is as bad as it looks from here on sensors, I honestly lay odds on Potter already being in whatever op-area we drop into before we get there. He has a history for that kind of thing."

/-/

**Eden Prime, Outskirts of Planetary capitol - 06.02.2183**

Harry really wished for two things.

First, he really should have made contact with the local garrison when he bought his land, commission or no. It was too late now, and what with there being a war on, he peeked in on the local tac-net. It turned out the granddaughter of General Billy Surrender-kins was a local, and talking to (read: harassing) the Williams family again would have been a hoot. Ah, missed opportunities.

Second, he couldn't help but think that whatever the hell these synthetics that were attacking were, they were acting as some kind of karmic retribution for all of the computers he destroyed by accident and the few hundred toasters he had fried 'by accident' before he worked out the technology/magic thing back in 2108.

The government of the town of Kent had never forgiven him (those that knew anyway) and it now appeared that the universe had not either. Harry now really wished he had not incurred that kind of cosmic debt. He had enough trouble on his own anyway.

As he left his place, Harry raised a few good old fashioned war-wards around his house and apparated to the section of his land near the tentacle monster dreadnaught. He needed to find how and where the locals were being evacuated to assist, but he also desperately needed to claim he had seen enough hentai to know where this whole attack was going and his wit was useless without an audience.

The massive ship seemed content for the moment with dropping off more flashlight heads near the spaceport, which was fine by Harry because the moment it decided to provide fire support the colony was in real trouble.

In the absence of any Intel, Harry decided to do things the old fashioned way. So he popped around the limits of his visual range, apparating from cover to cover until he heard either explosions or gunfire.

There was a constant low level of sporadic fire across the city, but until he found a firefight or an authority figure, he was on his own.

The beacon thing, which probably should have been a secret but was definitely not, was the only thing of any real value on the planet. Unless you really liked fourth reformation Methodists, which hey, who was he to judge. Outside of that scenario the robots and dreadnaught had to be here for the prothean beacon.

So Harry made his way to the dig site, since that was where someone who wanted it would probably go first. Between the second and third round of strip poker the night before one of the scientists got chatty, so Harry knew the beacon had been moved to the spaceport for pickup. Sentient invading light sources from beyond the stars would probably check the dig site first though.

He made it most of the way there before he finally found some trouble.

The tac-net registered a platoon on patrol near his location, and having not found any flashlights capable of resisting the _piccorudere _and a few shots to the torso from his Brawler, he headed their way.

Harry wasn't the biggest fan of Armax Arsenal, but to his credit he freely admitted that was because he wasn't the biggest fan of Turians, Shanxi having left a bad taste in his mouth even thirty years later. He _could_ recognize quality though and the Brawler line had that in spades.

At any rate, he finally managed to close with the patrol, which had been running their route at a jog for the last few minutes. Having been shot a few times in his day, Harry was careful to snap a number of twigs he had picked up for this exact purpose and kick a few stones he saw lying around, approaching a bunch of stressed and trigger happy marines in the middle of a patrol being a risky prospect at the best of times.

Having heard him, they stopped and took a defensive posture in a small valley just ahead of where he was, evidently waiting for him. Harry tucked his wand into his gauntlet, slapped his pistol to the magnet at his thing, and made sure to approach with hands up and in the open.

Of course no plan survives contact with the enemy.

The marine platoon consisted of five three man fire teams, one of which he could immediately tell were tasked with casualty duty. They had two grunts on makeshift stretchers in the middle of their formation. He was met with the more deadly end of seven rifles pointed directly at him and a shouted, "Identify!"

Harry could have kicked himself for his response, "Ashley Williams? OH SHIT WHATS THAT!?"

Harry crested the short rise at the edge of their mini-valley, hands up and all, only to find seconds later that five flashlights had the same idea from the other side of the valley, save that whole 'peaceful' aspect. He heard the voice of his favorite retired general's granddaughter (she did a wonderful _Ulysses_, as Billy was so keen to share), then of course he had to go for the classic distraction technique. as he said it, he could see visible disgust and confusion through the marine's visors at the fact that he had actually gone for that age old tactic in front of a group of Systems Alliance Marines in the year 2183. In his defense there was a visibly larger flashlight on the other side, decked out in red and a number of rather sinister looking antennas.

In a flash he had his wand in one hand and his pistol in the other, and in a series of flashes the marines saw him as threat and opened fire. Sadly for all but two of the platoon, in the wrong direction. Harry's kinetic barrier lit up like a pyjack at a Krogan bar mitzvah, and in the same moment the flashlights on the other side of the valley began firing.

With a twist Harry flung himself through space, aiming for the same ridge as the mechs but about ten meters further up. He appeared on target, and his prayers to Odin, Anubis, and the Maori god Auahitūroa were answered, in that the flashlights only had three units not visible from his former position, none of whom were looking at him.

Two marines fell immediately to the flashlight's fire, two of the ones on casualty duty one of whom fell dead directly on top of the man he had been guarding. The majority of the marines who had been firing on his former position figured out that his ploy had been less bad joke and more genuine dismay.

Harry didn't bother with cover, the marines didn't have any which inspired the part of him that valued fairness to temporarily overrule the part of him that liked not getting shot. Aiming carefully he called out, "_Kontakte Lyn!" _firing off a bolt of lightning into the group of machines, specifically at the big fella.

The electricity actually caught the edge of the antenna on the things right shoulder, burning straight through whatever it was made of and causing its chest to explode outward and catch fire. Like one might expect from an organic, the machine's three fingered hand tightened as if in a death spasm, causing it to fire its massive rifle wildly into the ground and unit immediately to its right.

The fire from the rifle punched through the second machine's kinetic barrier, but not much else. Harry was never one to let an advantage go, however, and finished the dead flashlight's work with a few well-placed shots.

The whole sequence of events took place over a period of perhaps five seconds, not a lot of time by almost any definition, but enough for the marines to figure the situation out and rally. Harry grabbed the machines' attention by taking out the big one, so when the 11 rifles of the surviving patrol began barking out for attention they took the remaining three flashlights at the tip of the ridge out almost immediately.

While they shot up the barriers and shells of those three, Harry had the three back-up units that hadn't crested the ridge to deal with. Their collected fire brought his barrier down and made him cast a shield in front of himself. Hyper accelerated metal pellets crashed against a glowing silver dome, each shot beating against it shield like drum, filling the air with a reverberating series of bangs.

Harry concentrated on holding the shield, and with another twist threw himself through space to a point behind the units firing on him. He arrived in one piece, with each of the flashlights still firing on his old position.

Harry spent a second refining his aim, then cast three quick _piccorudere_s with the wand in his left hand. The static of the charm overwhelmed each of their barriers in an instant, allowing his Brawler Mk. VIII in his right hand to puncture and shred each of the three machine's chest cavities.

Harry used his omni-tool to send a ping through his surroundings as soon as the last one fell. The lack of incoming gunfire was a solid indicator, but he'd been hurt by enemies playing dead or waiting for him to drop his guard before. His hardware didn't pick up any kind of return, other than the marines anyway, so he figured he was okay. Except for the marines.

If his motion tracker was any indication, they left a fire team with the casualties and the remaining eight were at the edge of the ridge, about to crest it from their side. He had a feeling they might even already have eyes on him, so with exaggerated care he slapped his Brawler to his thigh and put his wand back into his gauntlet.

The wand thing was probably going to raise some questions, but if he was lucky they'd wait till everyone was out of danger. Then they crested the ridge and pointed their guns at him again.

"Hands up!"

Harry quickly complied.

"You a biotic?"

Two marines closed on him while the rest covered. It sounded like they had voted Ashley the spokeswoman.

Harry grinned.

"Something like that."

One of the two took his pistol while the other stood behind him, gun drawn, he guessed.

"You with these things?"

Harry shook his head, "Would I have killed this bunch of jumped-up toasters if I was?"

A lady in the back snickered at the toaster comment, which may have been a mistake given that encouraging Harry rarely went to a good place. Sensing a distinct lack of conflict, four marines peeled off and went back to the downed men on the other side of the ridge.

The spokeswoman waved off the rest of the group, grabbing his pistol from the man who had confiscated it as he passed, and motioned for Harry to drop his hands. With a practiced eye, she ejected his thermal magazine and his ammo block, checking both for illegal mods probably. When her cursory search revealed nothing, she put both pieces back into the gun and handed it back to Harry.

"You know me?"

"I know your grandfather. Wiley old bastard, but Billy is a good man."

Her eyes narrowed behind the visor of the helmet she wore.

"Only one person calls grandpa 'Billy'."

Harry's smile stretched across his face, "Harry James Potter in the flesh! Though Billy still calls me 'that bastard' I think."

First Sergeant Ashley Williams put her hands on her hips and frowned forcefully at the armored man in front of her.

"Grandpa was the one who convinced me to take this posting. He said something about 'catching up with that bastard' when he sent me that message."

If it was possible, Harry's smile widened even further, "Like I said, Billy is a good man."

/-/

From the valley he met them in to the spaceport, Harry made good time with the marines. It was the best idea they had given that both evac and the prothean beacon were there. Faced with that logic, Harry decided to abandon his loose patrol of the area around the dig site where they had found beacon thing and just accompany them (well, protect them, but how do you explain to a squad of Alliance marines that they might need protection?).

Their progress would have been slower without Harry's omni-tool scans. With them as an early warning system the group managed to evade two other small ambushes and totally reverse a third. Harry personally volunteered to carry the bodies of the two downed marines, Nirali Bhatia and oddly enough one of his neighbors, Ninad Ayyangar.

Inside half of an hour they made it to the port, and secured the beacon along with the shuttle pad.

The weird squid-dreadnaught was still on station just outside the city for whatever reason, and it seemed to be jamming everything above mid-range comms. They didn't have any pressing casualties, the injured marines being stable, and as harsh as the sentiment was the dead marines were dead no matter what happened. Without orders above the regular patrol they were assigned, and without comms above about a klick or so, the decision was made to bunker down and await either back up or restored comms.

Harry made sure to warn all the marines off approaching the beacon. None of the scientists had any good ideas about what the thing did, even calling it a beacon was based more around the fact that it looked a bit like a mining pylon that prospectors used to mark sites for later excavation. Bouncing terahertz identification scans off the thing showed that it had some kind of immobilization field emitter, and a hell of a lot of circuitry they didn't understand.

He was tempted to just throw it into one of the boxes scattered around the pad, but he didn't want to get close enough to do it.

/-/

Things were going well. Well... Well enough for a day that started with a hangover and then moved directly into an invasion from a bunch of flashlights. Or Geth apparently. Harry'd heard of them but never seen them, and Miss Williams had better intel than he did evidently.

So things were going well.

Right up until one of the fucking marines, an honest to god redshirt, full helmet, no nametag or identifying marks of any kind, this fucking marine had to go and say, "I'm bored."

Harry winced visibly. In another lifetime a man named Neville Longbottom used those words, and the building they were in exploded, causing the pair to lose the criminal they were after, and in the resulting fires, all of their hair.

Another man named Ronald Weasley once said those words, and a flight of dragons literally fell from the sky, capsizing Harry's transport. After extracting a blood oath to never use the phrase again, the pair of them made a less magical promise to one another to never go fishing in Romania again.

A woman named Hermione Granger did not believe him when he claimed he was cursed, and used that exact pair of words in a test.

The section of the Hogwarts' library they were in at the time burned to the ground, the spark that started the fire came from a tiny first year student who later claimed to be distracted when the big fluffy cat he was looking at turned out to be a woman's hair.

In summary, Harry hated those fucking words.

As if on cue, a vibration picked up in the floor plating of the pad. It rose steadily over a period of roughly a minute, before the platoon's tac-net started screaming.

"We've got a monorail inbound out here, one turian, three of those big red ones, and twelve of the normal ones on it. They also have a lot of cargo. Range about twelve hundred meters."

Harry walked over to the red shirt, or blue armor? He'd think it over later. As he approached he striped the gauntlet from his right hand, the seals each unlatching with loud sucking sounds. When his skin was free, the other marines saw the determination in his steps and quickly moved to the side.

When he was within five feet, Harry cupped his hand over his mouth and blew gently into it, causing a spark to coalesce. The spark flickered and grew until flames poured over every exposed inch of his skin. The marines all stared dumbfounded.

Lighting and teleportation were each one thing. They'd be a bitch to explain, but for a person who'd seen FTL transit and an Alliance standard overload grenade, their belief could be suspended. Fire crawling around bare skin, being lit from a man's breath though?

Droplets of fire fell from his outstretched hand, marring the surface of the deck plate with small sooty lines. When he reached the marine, he took his flaming hand, and smacked the armored man upside the back of his head.

It came from Harry's lips in an enraged hiss, "Do not ever say those words!"

If a fully armored and helmeted face could look betrayed, the marine's did, "All I did was say I was bored!"

Harry smacked the marine upside the head again, even harder.

"Listen here you two bit git: Never. Say. Those. Words," Harry pointed to his omni-tool, which still showed the reports of the local tactical net. As if by ([A/N]: Forgive me) magic, one of the marines on over watch on the monorail line called back in.

"We identified the cargo on the line, its high-ex munitions. There's enough to level most of the city, looks like."

Harry called back to the over watch, "I need an identification on those explosives, are they chemical or fusion?"

He looked back at the marine, whose helmet now wore two separate sooty hand prints, "I swear to god, if you say it again, I will personally show you a fate worse than death-"

"NO!"

"YES! You'll be testing new field ration flavors for the rest of your career on Luna! I know an ex-general, I'll do it, I'm crazy!"

The platoon visibly recoiled in horror. Setting one's self on fire was one thing, there were few things indeed an Alliance marines feared worse than Alliance standard field rations.

Clutching his fiery fist again to his chest, Harry made his way to the over watch crew. They stood on a bridge crossing over the monorail line, taking cover behind boxes and marking the inexorable advance of fifteen robots, a Turian, and enough explosives to make a decent sized dent in a planet.

Noting the double chevrons on the neck collar of the armor nearest him Harry called out, "Corporal, you got a ID on those explosives yet?"

"No, uh, Sir. No ID yet. We were guessing chemical based on some of the markings on the container, but they're still just short of a klick out, so it's right hard to tell for sure."

The marine shot a gimlet eye at the fist engulfed in flames, and the lack of clear military markings of any kind, "If you don't mind my asking sir, but are you alright there? What with the flame and all."

Harry looked down at his fist in surprise for a moment, as if he had never quite seen it before, and was astounded on having made such a discovery, "Well would you look at that!"

He stared at his hand for a moment, turning it about to catch it from every angle. While he did so the rumbling from the oncoming train continued getting fractionally louder, announcing for the world to hear that a big load of 'you're not gonna have a good day' was coming right their way.

"No corporal, I think I'm fine."

The marine huffed a bit.

"Good to know. Do you have a rank, uh, sir?"

"Not at the moment, but for what it's worth I was a staff commander for a while."

The marine looked back through his sight, marking distance and updating the tac-net, "Always thought you officer types were a bit daft."

Harry pulled his wand from its sheath in his gauntlet, and ran the tip across his wrist, cutting his veins wide open. The blood pooled unnaturally around his wrist, and the fire touching it grew stronger.

"Corporal, you have no bloody idea."

As the monorail got to within three hundred meters, the robots opened fire at the direction of the Turian. They had guessed, rightly, that a platoon of marines would both understand the markings on the crates they were taking cover behind, and not be too keen on firing at them.

At one hundred fifty meters, Harry took up a quiet chant, just below the hearing of most of the men around him. The corporal he had been bothering earlier turned to get a look, and was more than a bit disturbed by what he saw.

Using his wand as a brush, Harry had drawn what looked to his inexpert eye like a bad pentagram in his own blood. Where the bottom two spokes of the star in the middle should have ended, they instead went on to form a few different arrows all generally pointed towards the oncoming tram. Harry kept his chant up, with one eye on the tactical readout on his omni-tool.

When the distance from the dock to the lead rail car fell down to eighty meters, the big red Geth started firing the significantly larger rifles they help, pounding down on the marine positions with energy pulses like siege weapons. The fire team that had been holding the far side of the bridge had fallen back to the bridge and landing pad beyond. Under first sergeant Williams' watchful eye began setting up a more detailed defensive position using cargo crates.

At twenty meters to dock, most of the cover on the bridge had been destroyed, and nearly all of the marines that had been on over watch there retreated to Williams' second position. the energy pulses from the larger Geth were brutal in their efficiency, simultaneously chewing up and grinding down the hardened plas-steel of the standard cargo containers.

Harry was still there, still chanting, and being guarded by a single corporal that really hoped he knew what he was doing. At fifteen meters, the corporal's faith proved to not be misplaced.

With a firm declaration of "_Fiendfyre_," the fire that had been flowing around Harry's wrist and hand followed the flow of his blood down to the circle he prepared, and from there shot out like the screams of the damned. The cargo container they had been hiding behind was reduced to white hot slag in an instant, the energy and bullets fired in their direction fared no better against the torrent of fire. It swept like a physical thing down from the bridge, flowing between the boxes of high-explosives leaving them as islands in a flood of thermal energy.

The Geth's kinetic barriers held them secure against the fire for seconds before they went the way of the cargo box before them. The Turian's shields too held for but a moment, then he joined his synthetic brethren in the unholy fire's jaws.

The rush of fire caused air to whip through the canyon formed by the ceramacrete and alloy plated landing pad. The compression and movement of the wind made it whistle high and loud, masking the final burst transmissions of the Geth and the death screams of an immolated bird-man from outer space.

When his enemies were dead, utterly and completely destroyed by fire hotter than that at the heart of a neutron star, yet inexplicably cool enough to not set off three tonnes of explosives, Harry began visibly struggling and sweating. Slowly, at a fraction of a fraction of its previous pace, the flow of the fire reversed. It slowly curled round the explosives, and with visible reluctance made its way back up to the bridge. Licks of fire flicked off the main flow, caressing the slag of the cargo container in front of Harry and the marine, driving its temperature back up, but still slowly reversing to the circle it sprang from.

It condensed, flowing into and around itself as it fell back into the circle, and when all was contained the blood making up the circle became ash, and the fire returned to Harry's hand. It lay white hot in a blob in his hand the size of a grenade, and had it obeyed the laws of conventional physics it would have been emitting the same radiation commonly put out by pulsars.

When it was condensed in his hand, vitality returned to Harry's countenance and he began to smile, "Cool, huh?"

The corporal, who had stayed by his side, thinking he was guarding an idiotic civvie despite said civvie's earlier competence, was dumbfounded. He wasn't a scientist, the intersection of scientist and marine was rather rare indeed, but he knew a bit about physics and fire and how things normally should work. What he had just seen violated everything he knew about the universe he lived in.

And now that crazy civvie was tossing the fire-thing from hand to hand like it was a hot potato.

Then he dropped it.

Harry looked up at the marine next to him with wide eyes, and a bloodless complexion. In a flash he noted that he only good thing about the scenario he was involved in was that the corporal who had stuck by him already looked ready to bolt.

"Shit. Run."

And so they ran. Sprinting full out they made it to the barriers that Ashley Williams set up, vaulting them and making for cover as fast as they could. Sergeant Williams made to stand and ask them just what in the hell happened on the monorail, when Harry jumped on top of her, forcing her to the ground, and yelled, "Cover!"

On the other side of the wall, the monorail dock and the monorail itself went up in a pillar of fire that actually touched the edge of the planet's atmosphere. There was no debris or fallout, just a nanosecond's worth of the thermal output of your average neutron star output into the atmosphere of the planet, an act which would completely throw off the natural weather patterns of Eden Prime for over a year.

/-/

In orbit over the planet the sensors of the SSV Normandy registered a moment of extreme thermal output from the planet below, and struggled to not register the event as an anomalous. The VI assisting the sensor tech ran the information across the tech's screen, and then ran a number of small recalibrations before finding the predicted results of the event it had witnessed, lending more evidence to it not being an anomaly. In less than a minute the sensor tech and the VI agreed that some kind of massive explosion took place, and they forwarded the information to the captain.

Captain of the SSV Normandy, David Anderson, looked at the data sent to him from his techs along with a wealth of information which had only in the last few seconds managed to cut through the ECM of the dreadnaught ship on the planet.

He looked at the data, and he couldn't help but curse, "God dammit Potter."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

[A/N]: Okay. So I lied. I tried to write the next chapter of my other story, and it was a lot harder than writing the next chapter of this one, so I just gave up and figured I'd do this one.

Things to note: chapters in this story probably aren't going to be super long. The story as a whole _may_ end up being as long as some of my other works, but if I make the chapters smaller I can put them out more often. So lets hope adopting Valve's Half-Life model doesn't end with me not make Half-Life 3.

With all my useless comments made, enjoy!

**Eden Prime, Cargo Shuttle Pad at the Outskirts of Planetary Capitol - 06.02.2183**

Harry groaned.

He hated when that happened.

Last time he dropped a ball of _fiendfyre_ he got his fourth official censor by the International confederation of wizards. Never you mind that the spell closed the death gate the revived Knights of Walpurgis opened at the Tunguska impact site.

Harry sighed and shifted some of the rather melted plas-steel container off of himself.

It wasn't like he didn't understand their point, he was directly and singularly responsible for what all the non-magical types began referring to as 'global warming', but it would be nice to just have someone appreciate him for having saved the day once in a while, even if he fucked up a bit.

Speaking of which, "Ashley?"

From the pile of armor beneath him came, "That Bastard?"

Harry shifted off her, and laid back down with a sigh.

Yep. That sounded right.

A deep reverberating sound filled the air and with its mass effect fields lancing huge static charges into the atmosphere, the weird squid-dreadnaught took to the air and went into space.

From where he laid, harry watched it rise and disappear.

Yeah.

That seemed right.

/-/

The sight lieutenant commander Jane Shepard walked into wasn't what she expected, but given that the omni-tool readings she had indicated either a nuclear detonation or the presence of a small sun, it wasn't that big of a deal.

The marines in the patrol the tac-net said was near, along with their two objectives, seemed to have taken cover behind cargo crates. As a result, they all had those crates and their contents melted over them when whatever bomb that exploded went off, even the beacon. Gods above.

Potter seemed to be alright, Jane vividly recalled how god damn annoying he was, so in her opinion that was a bit of a wash, but the beacon seemed mostly intact and the marines seemed the same.

Two Marines were trying to separate a washing machine from the back of a third, where it had melted and stuck itself between plates. Another was attempting to pull his legs out of a cargo container-deck plate sandwich.

It didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but Jane had seen Harry Potter's brand of casual insanity and violation of physics before, so she decided to write it off and move on.

Shepard had taken Kaidan Alenko and Richard 'Leeroy' Jenkins with her as her away team, but evidently neither shared her acquired taste for the weird. Beneath Kaiden's breath she clearly heard, "What in the hell..."

Jenkins went to the man trying to get his legs free, setting a combat knife and the butt of his rifle to the situation. Alenko applied his biotics to the dishwasher-attached-to-back issue. Jane went right for their secondary objective.

Their secondary objective looked like he was snoring.

"Potter? Harry Potter"

The man flinched and pushed the shining plas-steel formed in his shape off of himself, "I'm awake, I'm awake! Just resting my eyes for a minute Williams, Christ."

Jane looked down at the man who looked both as tired and as crazy as she remembered. His eyes still had that glint of madness in their emerald depths. She remembered Elysium. God how she remembered Elysium.

Potter drew himself into a sitting position, and shading his eyes against the sun, he examined her.

"You're not Williams."

"No," she said frowning, "No I'm not."

"Back-up then. I don't suppose you know who the Turian fellow was? Or the dreadnaught thing?"

"You saw Nihilus?"

Harry stared at her for a moment, clearly working through something in his head. When he reached whatever conclusion he was heading towards, he swiped a hand across his face, of course he forgot he had a gauntlet on that hand, so the only thing he accomplished was scratching his face a bit.

"Fuck! There were two of them then."

She took another look around the pad, her rifle clutched loosely in her hands. The walls and floor looked like either avant-garde Elcor art, or like the old Earth painter Salvador Dali had gone at it with a blowtorch.

Walls bent at funny angles where they had partially melted, the deck plating had just plain melted in some places leaving oddly shaped holes in the ground, _and there was a damn marine with a washing machine melted onto his back!_

"How did you all survive whatever it was that went off? And how did those explosives on the ruined monorail out there not go off?"

Potter evidently gave up, returning to his former position on his back and pulling the melted cargo container 'blanket' back over himself, "Trade secret."

Jane had no idea what was going on. What she did have was a dead spectre, a messed up colony, a disabled rail station, and a shuttle pad that was about forty percent effective because it had melted. She hated these missions.

/-/

**High Orbit over Eden Prime - 06.02.2183**

"As I live and breathe, Anderson? Dave Anderson? You picked me up off Akuze, what, six years ago?"

His long years of service, and the even longer months of working with Udina, were the only things that kept a grimace off his face when Anderson saw Harry Potter again when he entered the briefing room. Even all that experience wasn't enough to keep the note of reluctance from entering his tone.

"Yes, though I'm not sure if I want that to be longer or shorter. Last time we met you stole my shuttle and left a note that said you 'had things to do and we were taking too long'"

Harry rubbed his jaw and looked into the distance for a moment, "Sounds like something I'd do..."

"Then you left us some kind of comm device that is still confusing the R&D folks back on earth."

Harry blew air through his teeth and leaned back in his chair.

"Yeah, they should really just let that one go."

"I don't think they will, considering they opened a panel on the side and discovered enough room to park a Mako in, filled with thousands of flash formed circuit boards and processors."

"What, you think I spent two days on that god forsaken rock just picking my nose?"

"No, but casual violations of everything modern science understands about geometry and physics are the kinds of things that tend to get the R&D folks interested."

Harry paused for a second to appreciate how much he enjoyed having a table in a briefing room. For some reason, known only to a bunch of engineers who thought listening to Turians of all things would be a good idea, the briefing room was just a big circle of chairs next to the FTL comm links. Now he had nothing to do with his hands and it felt weird.

Returning his focus to the conversation he quipped, "Everyone needs a hobby."

Anderson's eyebrows rose of their own accord, "You describe technology that can make something bigger on the inside than it is on the outside a hobby?"

"Honestly? No. It's more of a minor talent. Seriously minor."

The younger man in the room shook his head almost wistfully, "Potter, that's a great route to get yourself detained and examined."

Harry allowed his eye to widen slightly, "It that what this is? Because I'll level with you, it's been a while since I've had a good probing. I kind of expected going into space to involve more of it, and so far it have just been a huge running disappointment."

Anderson unknowingly echoed Jane's sentiment from just hours earlier. He really hated these kinds of missions. Or maybe he just really hated Harry Potter.

"No, Potter. We asked you here to offer you a job."

/-/

**SSV Normandy, en route to Citadel - ****06.03.2183**

"Please leave me alone."

Harry continued swinging his legs and sitting on the workbench next to Ashley Williams. Whenever she began looking the other way Harry disillusioned a different screwdriver or spanner, which was severely compromising her ability to both ignore him and service the Avenger she had mostly disassembled out in front of her.

"C'mon, Williams! I haven't spoken to any of the Williams brood in two or three years! Just tell me what's going on!"

She closed her eyes and just repeated in a monotone, "Please leave me alone."

It was a damn shame for her that Harry was patient and her grandpa was a bit worried about her. Harry liked General Williams, the lad was a bit misguided, but his heart was in the right place, and when Harry got a message back shortly after he hit the Normandy saying to take care of her, well, Harry almost always did his best.

"Okay, what if I went for more neutral ground, your gramps said Sarah was doing awesome in school, isn't she set to graduate soon?"

Ashley looked at him, her eyebrows furrowing in a way that spoke to Harry of imminent danger, "Gramps?"

With an air of studied nonchalance he looked down at his nails as he said, "Yeah, he and I are old friends, we bonded at Shanxi over a mutual dislike of being invaded, and a recently acquired distaste for Turians in general. Of course then I knocked him out and stole his access codes, but I'm fairly sure he's forgiven me for it. We probably talk once a week or so over the net."

"So why were you surprised to see me back on Eden Prime?"

"Well to be perfectly honest, I very deliberately just ignored the alliance. I just got out of Akuze, so I bought myself a nice open sector of land and hired myself out as a groundskeeper for the planetary council's manor lands."

The oldest Williams sister finally saw fit to drop her partially disassembled rifle and turn fully into the conversation, "Okay, with respect, who in the hell are you? I looked you up a bit on the shuttle, and nothing around you makes any sense! You apparently single handedly stopped the invasion of Shanxi, after knocking out an alliance general and stealing his defense net access codes, and when it all finished you sued anyone who tried to report your name. At Elysium you did the same thing, and then you accepted a commission from the Alliance, which I can only guess you did so that you wouldn't have to sue every journalist on the planet again. If that wasn't enough, your name is all over the twenty-first century, your son and grandson apparently thwarted almost every major terrorist attack and even diffused nuclear tensions between Pakistan and India before the old United Nations stepped in. Then _you_ show up at the alliance's first contact with a thresher maw, killing it, and now you're some useless gardener on Eden Prime!"

She was shouting by the end, but it was only her last words that really got to Harry.

"Hey! You take that back! Not only was I Head Gardener, thankyouverymuch, but my gardens have won interplanetary recognition for their beauty in every season! The first Asari matriarch to ever land on a human colony world came because of my work!"

Ashley, Alliance Marine First Sergeant, zero-gee trained, and with some of the first Geth kills ever accomplished by any human, stepped back at the vehemence in Harry's tone.

"Sorry! Sheesh. Didn't know you took it that seriously."

Harry had to smile a bit, "Its okay, your grandfather just gives me shit all the time for the gardening thing, but what he doesn't know is that _I_ know the usernames he posts his terrible poetry under."

Ashley's eyes widened as her eyebrows rose, "Wait, he writes poetry?"

Harry gave an exaggerated grimace, "Oh god you would not believe it. I don't know if his haiku phase or his limerick phase was worse, but I do know it's all kinda bad. For what it's worth, he's gotten a lot better in the last few months."

The poor woman looked shell shocked, so Harry just went on, "What, you and your father's fascination with Tennyson and his _Ulysses _and _The Charge of the Light Brigade_ had to come from somewhere."

Ashley closed her mouth and turned away from him to the desk.

"My grandfather writes terrible poems on the extranet."

"For what it's worth, you got most of my history right. The public version anyway."

She blinked and refocused on the man still sitting on her desk, "So you're what, Harry Potter the fourth?"

Harry took his turn to stare into the distance, "Nope. I kinda wish though. I had two sons and a daughter once, James, Albus, and Lilly. Of course I think they're dead now," his brow furrowed slightly, "They were each well past a century when I left earth, back with their family on their mother's side, what I left of it anyway..."

"How old are you?"

Harry breathed in a sharp breath and began slowly, "That's not actually as easy a question as you might think. From the day I was first born, I have lived two hundred and two years," Harry turned to Ashley, who looked dumbfounded, "Bit proud of that actually. I believe I'm the record."

His expression fell somewhat, "but that's not the whole of my story. You've seen what I can do. Some of it. The more violent stuff anyway. The people I came from were all capable of such acts, maybe not with as much skill, but capable in general. Even among them I'm special."

Harry looked away again with a slight upturn at the corner of his lips, his tone was dark as he went on.

"They each stand out in my memory. Like that bit of fire I dusted up. I have a hard time with dates, never been good with time, I guess that's a bit of a side effect. Each of them I know intimately though. From the first time I died, I have lived one hundred eighty five years. It was May the second, nineteen hundred ninety-eight, 03:35. From the second, one hundred twenty eight years, it was December eighteenth, two thousand fifty-five, 17:54. I died with an amazing view of the sunset over the Himalayas. From the last time I died, wait," Harry looked at her in excitement, "What day is it, June something, yeah?"

Ashley was astounded, not just by what she was hearing but by the man himself. As he spoke you could see the age on him. When he just mentioned dying, his eyes lost their shine. She'd known him for just over a standard day, and even when he unceremoniously threw himself off her and declared that he was 'gonna have a nap', his eyes never lost their manic insane and cheery cast. He looked like he was twenty five, maybe older if he could afford a good genetic engineering package, but when he talked about death the light in his eyes disappeared. There was nothing there. He looked like he was dead right there.

Then he turned to ask her the date and in an instant he was back to the man that yelled oops after dropping a small sun.

It was with a shaky voice she said, "Third of June, Twenty-one Eighty-three."

"I thought so! The last time I died was one hundred years ago as of next week, June the seventh, two thousand eighty three at 06:31. I was stabbed literally in the back, just between the T11 and T12 vertebrae, hurt like a bitch, I'll tell you. Also led to my divorce from my wife!" Harry caught her eyes with his, mirth alive in him, "Let me tell you, I never took until death do us part seriously until then. I survived almost a century of marriage, then Whoop!" he threw his hands in the air, "stabbed with a specially prepared knife in the spine instead of my alarm going off."

Ashley looked like she had heard too much, and Harry felt he met his disclosure quota for the day, so he jumped off the table and with a casual wave dismissed his disillusionment over the spanner she needed to open up the coupler holding her rifle's thermal clip.

"Well. Good talk Williams! Same time tomorrow?"

He began walking back to the Normandy's elevator, whistling lightly. Before he could make it more than three steps he caught Ashley's mildly traumatized voice behind him.

"Why?"

He turned on his heel, "Hmm?"

With more strength in her voice, she met his eyes directly, "Why are you telling me this, you haven't even told the alliance brass this, from your file agents have met your old neighbors and you haven't told anyone any of this, why are you telling me?"

Harry gave a real genuine grin, "Two reasons. One, I really do like Billy. I met your father once, and he was a good man. Billy is SO proud of you, you have no idea. His little poet-warrior. When I told him who I happened to meet in defending another colony from invasion he ordered me to take care of you if I could. He was the last one to hear my story, and if I can, I will."

She looked intrigued and just a little embarrassed as Harry went on, "Second, and this one is my favorite, do you have any idea how many forms you're going to have to fill out and how many of those same agents you're gonna have to talk to when you report this? Ooooooooh boy, I would _not_ want to be you. Theres a lot more to my story then just the times I've gone and stretched the limit of my mortal coil, one day I'll tell you about the Marauders. For now, lets just say I have a reputation to maintain in the name of the greatest man I ever knew, and letting you off this one free would just kill it."

He smiled as wide as he could and began whistling again as he turned and made his way to an elevator. He gave a short wave as the door closed.

He left a fuming woman behind him, and was grateful again for his alarm charm on the requisitions officer that normally kept her company in the bay.

As the door fully closed, Ashley Williams unknowingly echoed the words of David Anderson.

"God Dammit Potter."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

**Citadel Station, Council Chambers - 06.04.2183**

"Saren Arterius. I think any of us would know those mandibles a kilometer away, but what is he doing with Geth on a human world?"

Councilor Tevos and Sparatus both made subtle glances at Valern. The STG usually knew one way or the other, and both the Turian and Asari councilors would eat their robes if all of those reports didn't make their way across his desk daily. If anyone had info on this unknown situation he would.

The alliance forwarded the rifle cam footage from the marines that had been on over watch back at the cargo shuttle pad to the council, which prompted the current meeting. The resolution on the footage wasn't the best, and it got progressively shakier as the Geth got closer and opened fire, but the footage clearly identified the unknown Turian Harry had incinerated.

Harry, First Sergeant Williams, and Lt. Commander Shepard all stood behind Anderson and Udina who had been addressing the council, Anderson having reasoned that the ground crew that was on station could possibly provide extra evidence. In retrospect, it's possible he did not think that one all the way through.

"Excuse me, did you say _Arterius_? Saren _Arterius_?"

The councilors and human delegation all turned and looked at the only slightly exultant face of Harry James Potter. Udina looked mortified, Anderson looked like he needed a double whiskey, Williams and Shepard looked like they were buying the next rounds.

Councilor Sparatus leaned to his right to get a better look at the man who interrupted the meeting of four of the most powerful races in the known universe, "Yes. Saren Arterius."

Somehow the Turian knew he was going to regret this next bit, but there were forms for these kinds of things that had to be obeyed, "Why?"

Harry smiled widely, and the bar tab for the other three combatants in the room rose.

"Oh, well I stabbed and killed his brother."

The council room fell dead silent. The gurgling of the fountain near the entrance to the room tried it's best to fill the silence, but when even the other wheeling and dealing diplomats in the room had to stop to hear this human speak, it just couldn't fill the void.

Oddly enough Udina was the one to break the silence with a quiet, "What?"

"Funny story! This weird ship crashed landed on my farm shortly after that whole 'first contact' shindig. This was all before Shanxi went to hell you understand. So it crashes on my farm, ruining about a hundred hectares of my land, and when I get to the ship to try and help the crew out, this Saren guy's brother lands at the crash site and starts shooting at me!"

If he was being totally honest, Harry wasn't sure why he was there, and he was getting bored.

Sure Anderson said he wanted to put Harry's name forward for the first human spectre, which was cool, but Harry had actually written up a report, offloaded all of the tactical data he had, and painstakingly organized it all and detailed everything. There was no reason for him to be present.

He actually wrote a report to a nominal 'superior officer', and the last time he had done that was in the 2030s shortly before he quit working as an auror _for that exact fucking reason._

The council wasn't going to approve of him if they had a single functional brain cell between them, Harry was a loose cannon and he enjoyed it. There was a damn good reason he had spent the last five decades or so talking with academics online and gardening, responsibility and him were a bad mix. That kind of thing resulted in accidentally causing global warming and the extinction of the yeti.

Hearing the name Arterius brought back some fun memories, so why not indulge and show the galactic authorities who they were considering hiring?

"Of course I take exception to that, I mean who wouldn't, some ship ruins my entire crop of sugar beets and then some asshole from a species I've never seen before begins shooting at me? So I hide in the ship and spend the next half hour playing cat and mouse with the jerk through a burning ship, the whole time listening to him rant about some kind of 'monolith' over the ship's PA. I finally turn the tables on him and track him down and he's locked himself into an escape pod and is yelling at me through the window about how I won't get away with this, and how his family will avenge him, and the might of the Hierarchy, and the Temple of Palaven and yada yada yada. So I take this sword I have, and I stab him through the window and as he's bleeding out on the window and through the hole in the hull (which blue blood, weird am I right?) I tell him that not only does he mess with my farm, but he goes and attacks me like a crazy person? Well one day I'll find his brother and kill him too."

Harry gave a very self-satisfied smirk to the now completely dumbstruck audience.

"Now I never really expected to do that, but, well, hell yes, two for two, baby!"

Councilor Valern took the following stunned silence as opportunity to quietly inform his fellows that STG recon reports supported Potter's story.

/-/

**Citadel station, Human Embassy - 06.04.2183**

"-COMPLETELY UNPROFESSIONAL, AND ABOVE ALL OF THAT HE MANAGED TO SINGLE HANDEDLY DERAIL THE DISCUSSION OF THE COUNCIL'S DISPOSITION ON A TURIAN LED ATTACK ON A HUMAN COLONY USING AN ARMY OF SYNTHETICS!"

Udina, in spite of his years of professional behavior and training in the delicate art of politics, found himself pacing against the backdrop of the citadel presidium behind his desk and ranting about his selection for humanity candidate to the spectres.

Anderson sat impassively on the other side of the desk, admiring the lazy patterns formed and dissolved in the air car traffic through the presidium ring. He'd just hand a half liter of scotch mixed with whatever rotgut Flux was passing off as alcohol these days, so his pensiveness was only mostly chemical.

Williams had claimed it was an old marine tradition, passed on by some drill instructor (Edison? Ellison? Something like that.), and Shepard had supported her so he just ran with it. Mixing twenty-credit-a-shot authentic scotch with vodka made from what he privately suspected was boiled leather seemed dumb at the time, but given how much easier it was making this conversation with Udina, he might have to re-think his professional standards.

He could only blame Potter for these court martial-able thoughts.

"AS IF IT WASN'T ENOUGH, HE HAD TO DISPARAGE TURIAN BLOOD AND SPEAK TO THE TURIAN COUNCILOR'S FACE ABOUT ENDING A DISTINGUISHED FAMILY LINE! HUMANITY WILL BE LUCKY TO TREAT EFFECTIVELY WITH THE HIERARCHY OVER STARPORT DOCKING LICENSES AFTER THIS!"

"I don't know," Anderson said, "We have incontrovertible proof that the council's finest spectre, let alone one of the Hierarchy's finest operatives, was dirty. And honestly, the councilor seemed rather impressed that Potter had the guts to say any of that at the meeting. It pains me to support the man, but if anything I think his antics have given us a bit of leverage and an even stronger bargaining position. Did you see how Sparatus was sweating when Potter mentioned the Temple of Palaven?"

Udina struck his desk, making his console and all of the papers on it jump, "TURIANS DON'T SWEAT!"

David raised his hands in a defensive move, "Figure of speech! Figure of speech!"

/-/

**Citadel station, Upper Ward Alley - 06.04.2183**

Harry led an interesting life. No two ways about it. Surprise around every corner, the odd never-before-seen life form, and the occasional Krogan weapons engineer looking for a pen pal.

It led to a set of habits he spent a few decades honing.

First, he never went anywhere un-armed. He was once attacked by a werewolf in a lady's room in Japan, and the fight took easily four times longer than it would have had he been armed. That may have been because the quality of the porcelain in that particular establishment was low enough to shatter after a lupine head impacted it only once, but Harry firmly believed that having his wand on him would also have solved the issue quicker.

Second, he always made sure he had an exit. As he followed the directions given to him by Morlan of Morlan's Famous Shop to the nearest bathroom, there was a refurbished kodiak waiting for him in a bay off Kiothi ward, and an air car piloted by a VI orbiting the wards near his location.

Third, his invisibility cloak, a cloak capable of shielding him from death itself, was never outside of skin contact with him. A small and skin tight bracelet on his left wrist took care of that. It was made from titanium he had personally hewn from a wall in the deepest mine the goblins had ever dug into the earth. Harry purified the metal himself, forming it around his wrist and using metallurgical magic to almost take it into his very being. The resurrection stone was mounted in the bracelet, and no less than twenty one different space expansion charms layered into it made a small indentation on it large enough to hold the cloak.

In fairness, Harry had a bad week at work and was feeling rather dramatic. He started drinking pretty heavily with his old friend Neville, and ended up breaking into the goblin mines to do all of the work himself because he 'couldn't trust any race smaller than his penis to make a decent piece of jewelry'.

Neville later claimed before the committee that the International confederation of Wizards set to investigate the brief beginning and end of the Goblin revolt of 2027 that Harry had forced him at wand point to come with him, threatening to wreak unspeakable evil on (adopt) Neville's first child if he didn't help.

Harry last few habits were each relatively self explanatory. He made a point to always speak the local language, he never traveled without enough money to fund a small pirate band in case he got the itch for adventure, and he always did whatever it took to know the location of all local water closets.

It was this last habit that led him to the door immediately to the right of the hall leading to Chora's Den. Morlan said the bathrooms were here, so here he was.

Harry put a hand lazily through the door's holographic interface and when it opened took a few steps inside. It was clearly an alley, which was weird on a space station, but then these people rely on a race of bugs that self-destruct when examined for all their infrastructure needs.

He was about five meters in when he figured out he _may_ have been lied to.

In front of him were a Turian and two Salarians confronting what looked like a Quarian, but in fairness could have been a really tall Volus or one of those Raloi. Harry had heard some stuff, and you could hide a lot of feathers under an environmental suit. Then of course the fuckers saw him and out of nowhere everyone but the Quarian was shooting at him.

There were a lot of things Harry was prepared to accept in the name of interspecies peace.

Being shot at was surprisingly not on that list.

"This isn't a bathroom..."

He ducked and rolled to his right, a small alcove protecting him from the incoming fire which impacted the wall next to him. The Quarian seemed to throw out some kind of tech grenade, the immediate lack of hyper-accelerated metal chunks made Harry think a sabotage grenade, but he'd seen weirder and so wasn't willing to comment.

Ducking out of cover Harry used the Brawler at his hip to punch a hole in the visor of both Salarians. It took four shots each, but he'd been at the game long enough for eight shots to take him a fair bit less than two seconds.

It turns out standing in the middle of a big area without cover is less of a good idea than it seems on paper. (Hint: does not seem like a good idea on paper.)

The unknown (Harry was just going to go with Quarian) ran back towards his supporting fire, while the Turian that remained behind was still trying to eject his thermal clip or at least expose it to atmo so it would cool quicker.

Harry put an arm around the Quarian as it/he/she threw themselves into cover beside him, and before the Turian could effectively take aim his wand swished and flicked and dragged the poor bastard into the air above the cover it attempted to use.

From deep in one of the pockets on definitely _her_ armor, the Quarian withdrew a pistol. The pair fired as one on the remaining Turian who had been shouting about someone named fist not paying them enough for this.

It was almost worth a sigh as the lifeless body floated in the air. They always claimed vengeance and not being paid enough for this stuff, especially after he became involved.

From immediately next to him and beneath his arm, the Quarian offered her hand, "Tali Zorah nar Rayya."

Harry accepted the three fingered hand, "Harry James Potter."

They shook briefly.

"Zorah family name, nar Rayya, of the ship Rayya?"

It was hard to tell behind the helmet, but Harry was pretty sure he impressed her. He may have been over two hundred years old, but showing off a bit for a girl never got old.

"How did you know that? Virtually no one knows Quarian nomenclature conventions."

They began moving out, Harry automatically guiding their steps towards the nearest entry to the C-sec academy, "Believe it or not, I learned from a Krogan. Some of them are not only well versed in Quarian culture, but surprisingly concerned for its state."

"Krogan?"

Harry smiled widely, "They may be a bunch of brutal and brain dead muscle piles, but they often find themselves concerned that others _aren't_ brutal brain dead muscle piles. There are a few that think the way to survive the genophage is to spread the way of the Krogan. They're kinda like the most blood thirsty missionaries you'll ever hear about. And you've got to remember, there are quite a few old enough to remember what you all looked like without masks and enviro suits."

It was hard to tell behind the mask, but Harry's frowning woman senses were tingling.

"Don't worry Miss nar Rayya. I've got this one for you."

/-/

**Citadel station, Citadel Security Headquarters - 06.04.2183**

The pair reached C-sec and went to give evidence on the event and find a clean room and registered doctor versed in Quarian physiology. Tali insisted that none if it was necessary, and that she'd been shot before and she'd taken her share of suit breaches, but Harry was having none of it.

Sure, she was scrappy and seemed like she could mostly take care of herself, but she was throwing off waves of 'I'm young, naive, and cute! Take advantage of me!' and Harry couldn't live with himself if he didn't take care of her and at least set her up in a better place than he had found her.

Though given that he had found her in an alley that a Salarian merchant identified as a bathroom, that wasn't likely to be very hard.

As they passed out of the elevator Harry remembered that his life wasn't ever simple enough to just do things like that. He missed his farm. Back then all he had to worry about was that some of his vegetables were randomly gaining sentience or spontaneously turning into toy robots.

"Potter! Hey Potter! I've been looking for you everywhere! Harry Potter!"

Harry almost face palmed, before remembering he had his gauntlets on. A Turian with blue colonial markings and decked out in standard C-Sec armor was shouting his name from across the C-Sec atrium thing and running for him. At his side, Tali cocked her head at him.

"Potter! Hello, my name is Garrus Vakarian, I'm the C-Sec agent assigned to figuring out how much damage Saren did before you killed him. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you for a minute, but the bureaucracy refused me clearance to try and contact you through the embassy or your ummm... corporate holdings."

"You guys could track that? Damn. They told me the silent partnership thing was ironclad."

Garrus scraped the tip of his fringe awkwardly with one claw, "Yeah, they may have lied to you."

Harry smiled and shook his head, "Hanar. You never know what you're going to get."

The Turian twitched his mandibles in what Harry recognized as a Turian smile, "True enough! There's one down on the presidium right now trying to preach-"

Tali had enough of the not situation-specific conversation and chose to butt in, "Hold on, you're investigating Saren? Spectre Saren Arterius?"

Harry's eyes shone with mirth as he corrected, "_Former_ Spectre Saren Arterius."

Tali cocked her head to the side again, prompting, "I may have burned him alive."

The helmet didn't move an inch and if anything Harry loosely detected a raised eyebrow, "Allegedly."

No response from either of his alien friends.

"Let's move on."

/-/

**Citadel station, Citadel Security Headquarters, office of Garrus Vakarian - 06.04.2183**

"We need a functional beacon, and lo and behold, the apes found one on Eden Prime."

"From the beacon to the conduit."

"Yes."

"And the return of the reapers..."

...

...

...

"Well shit."

Vakarian's flanged voice filled his small office more completely than the human and Quarian he shared it with ever could.

Tali'Zorah was sitting in the office's second chair and affecting an air of nonchalance. She was pulling it of pretty well, and as a snarky asshole who often revealed tantalizing information nonchalantly, it really spoke to him.

"I don't suppose you have any idea what was on that beacon, or what these conduit and reaper things are?"

"I pulled that audio out of a Geth platform I disabled on a small moon out in the Argos Rho cluster. They self-destruct their memory banks when the platform undergoes catastrophic failure, so I was lucky to salvage as much as I did."

Vakarian began to play with his console for a bit, cleaning up the audio and running it through several analysis programs.

Harry bided his time by idly trying to figure out what Tali looked like under the suit. Something about her hip shape was both filthy and intriguing...

"Well shit."

Harry could tell that was coming. He smiled.

"New problem?"

"Only if you like ancient and wealthy Asari matriarchs assisting rogue spectres in galactic level sedition."

"I knew today was going to be a good day."

/-/

Harry sent the bare bones of the data he had lucked into to the human embassy, prompting several individuals station wide to wonder why he had been left to wander alone in the heart of galactic commerce, and in turn was sent a strongly worded summons to the council chambers.

If Harry didn't know better he would have thought Ambassador Udina didn't like him.

Shortly after Harry's omni-tool interrupted their impromptu poker game, Garrus received a similar invitation to present his findings by his boss, some Turian Harry was given to understand was called Palin.

There was much grumbling and sighing as Harry took the cards back and converted them back to omni-gel. He loved that damn stuff, so useful, which was why he kept a small ocean of it in a hugely expanded container on his armor.

The three of them moved out of the small office and into the halls of C-Sec, making their way towards the rapid transit point, the normal workings of C-Sec keeping the journey interesting. A Volus was ratting out a business partner, Harry was eighty-five percent certain a rogue AI was routing funds through one of the standard comm screens, a Krogan was being warned against threatening some guy named Fist and-

Wait.

Harry knew that guy!

"Wrex?"

The Krogan shoved the human cop in front of him away and turned to the puny human who called him. Not many in this system actually knew his name without him having threatened them, or their being in C-Sec and thus being familiar with his rap sheet. The citadel was the place he normally found his boss's boss's boss.

"Who are you, human?"

Harry could tell the human thing was supposed to be an insult, but he knew Krogan fairly well and it was hard to offend him without gunfire being involved.

"Harry Potter, but are you Urdnot Wrex?"

Wrex's eyes narrowed.

"Potter? You're that human that Fortak is always trying to comm me about. I almost lost a bounty on Omega because he hacked my Omni tool to make sure I was getting his message!"

Harry smiled widely, "He told me about that! Said you were hunting down Vorcha in some kind of power tunnels for two weeks because of it!"

The much larger being seemed to growl at how light Harry's tone was, causing Garrus to caress the pistol at his hip and Tali to subtly position herself so that Harry was between her and Wrex.

Harry let the anger brew for a moment before reaching out to clasp forearms with the fish monster from beyond the stars, "Good to see you!"

Wrex seemed amused by the cheek of the human in front of him. It took a quad to mess with an alien that had literally eaten things larger than you. If Fortak wasn't lying, then the runt might even be able to out a bit of a fight up.

"We need to go, but-" wait, wasn't he trying to get fired? "Have you ever met the citadel council, Wrex?"


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

[A/N]: Full disclosure: Kinda drunk when I wrote this. Harry doesn't really want this job, but is somehow very qualified for it. I've been trying to get that across, hopefully it worked.

**Citadel Station, Council Chambers - 06.04.2183**

Harry and his very recently founded entourage piled into the elevator leading to the council chambers. He took the opportunity to double check the visual he was going to be sending out when he showed up.

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, a Quarian he met less than three hours before, was visibly nervous and attempting to maintain her calm. Given that she was going to be one of perhaps ten of her species to have ever appeared before the council in the last three hundred years, and that she was doing so alongside a Krogan that scared her enviro suit's reclamation into overdrive and a human that would have either been institutionalized or made captain in the flotilla, she thought she was doing pretty well. Pretty well still meant a Hanar could effectively interpret her body language as screaming 'OH GOD WHAT DID I DO TO GET HERE!', but she was still going strong.

Harry was impressed.

Garrus Vakarian, a Turian that Harry felt knew a lot more about him than he was comfortable with, seemed oddly at ease. Something about the entire sequence of events that led to where they were seemed to tickle the metal plated bird man, and given that the Krogan in the room had let him be the one to put his back to the wall in the elevator, he seemed to be doing just fine and dandy. Something about it made Harry curious is Turians could do that whole 'idle happy whistling' thing.

He resolved to ask later.

Urdnot Wrex, the well over five hundred year old only-mostly-defunct clan leader of Urdnot, was actually smiling. The invitation to come and meet the council had actually been the only thing that got him out of C-Sec without violence, his agreeing to not immediately introduce this 'Fist' character to the business end of his shotgun persuading the cops to let him go.

Harry strongly suspected that his personal brand of casual insanity actually made him something of an honorary Krogan, which pleased Wrex. Fortak had mentioned seconding any application he would ever choose to make to undergo something called 'The Rite', which Harry figured confirmed it. He had deliberately never asked what 'The Rite' was, having a strong personal policy that human puberty sucked enough, so why in the hell would he ever choose to deal with an alien version.

Overall, the crew he had with him was just going to raise all kinds of questions, and if Harry was very lucky they would make Anderson and Udina second guess every decision that led them to him. He found a _really_ nice homestead on a backwater colony called Freedom's Progress, so god willing this time next week he could be there and planting traditional colonial foliage. You know, beets, lettuce, potatoes, and cannabis.

/-/

When they actually got in front of the council, the hearing was already underway. Udina and the Turian named Palin both seemed to be staving off the council until Harry and Garrus arrived with their evidence.

Anderson, Shepard, and Williams all stood back and to the side, looking for the entire world like a bunch of bored security agents. Harry and his crew's appearance made a small trill of something that looked a lot like fear pass through the trio, but he was on their side so the idea that they would be afraid was ridiculous. Totally ridiculous.

Harry contemplated just buying his new farm right there.

Palin and Udina reintroduced Harry and Garrus, prompting the Turian to share the bulk of the evidence first.

The blue painted Turian linked Saren across several fake identities to controlling interests in the galactic corporation Binary Helix, and to significant investments in several colonial companies. Of particular note across his holdings was a private lab held by Binary Helix on Noveria that his declassified transit records showed a significant number of personal visits to over the last five years, and another similar facility on the rim world Virmire that appeared to be held entirely outside of any corporate control.

Tali was introduced, and after she spent a few minutes establishing her certifications in galactic standard electronics, shared the evidence she had linking Saren to Matriarch Benezia. Garrus showed tax papers and declassified mission reports linking Benezia through her followers to suspected Geth locations in the Skyllian Verge in the company of the late Mr. Arterius.

It was all really impressive, left little to chance, and adequately explained a number of avenues that could be used to determine how much damage the council's top spectre had truly done in selling out the sentients of the galaxy to pissed off artificial intelligences and a group called the Reapers.

Which was why Harry didn't pay attention to a single second of it having found something more interesting to poke and see what happens.

Councilor Sparatus seemed genuinely angry about Saren, and frequently interjected and asked questions.

Councilor Valern nodded his head frequently, and silently appeared to forward corroborating information to his fellows when the question of Benezia's connection to Saren was raised.

Those made sense.

What didn't make sense was that since entering the room councilor Tevos made and instantly broke eye contact with Wrex twenty two separate times. When they entered she had said one word in greeting to Harry and Garrus, before noticing Wrex and looking like she swallowed a live animal or something.

Wrex on the other hand had a smile so wide one could easily think he had found a fertile female or something, and had been staring straight at Tevos since that word came across.

Harry smelled adventure.

The opening he was looking for had the courtesy to arrive just two minutes later, when Sparatus finally completely bought into the evidence, "I... We... have little choice but to accept how far Saren fell before his death, and how far his corruption has gone into galactic political concerns. At our last meeting we formally began this investigation into his activities, but now I put forward we must actively pursue all leads into the threats posed by this 'Conduit' and these 'Reapers'. Saren Arterius was never known for making poor decisions, so as we now see he has indeed been plotting against galactic stability, we must now eliminate these interests he advanced. Anything less could be a potentially fatal mistake."

He, Valern, and Tevos seemed to hold a quick and silent vote, confirming Sparatus' proposal.

The Turian spoke again, "We must commend the actions of Harry Potter and the Human Systems Alliance for bringing all of this to light."

Pay dirt. Harry's smile looked almost as predatory as Wrex's.

"I can't take all of the credit, and indeed even the Alliance can't take all credit. Without my friends here, Garrus Vakarian, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, and indeed," this was his stab in the dark, "My old friend Urdnot Wrex here," Tevos betrayed over a century of political experience at the top by visibly cringing at the words, "The extent of Saren's action would never have been fully revealed."

Wrex looked at Harry with a significantly higher amount of respect in his eyes as he stepped forward, "No, no, no! Don't let Harry be modest here, in over seven hundred years of life I've fought Asari commandos and even matriarchs that couldn't have done as much."

Nearly everyone in the room was a bit confused by this point.

All of the Systems Alliance personnel had no idea how Harry, whose boots had never left a human controlled world before arriving on the citadel, was old friends with a Krogan without any of their agents knowing. And of all Krogan, this one?

Garrus and Tali were also focused along those lines, as each of them was fairly certain Harry had only met Wrex an hour ago.

Both of these groups were of course confused for the wrong reason.

What the on looking politicians and two out of three councilors were confused by was how fifteen words could hit an Asari matriarch harder than ten decades worth of political infighting combined.

Where she stood Tevos was very slightly shaking, and if her species sweat most figured she would a half step away from a full onset flop sweat.

"Councilor Tevos! I almost didn't notice you there! It is Tevos T'Hazi right? Did you know I met your mother once, and she told me if I was to ever meet you I should extend her greetings?"

The councilor stiffened before biting off in an icy tone, "I have no idea what you're talking about, and would refer any further statements or inquiries to the active C-Sec case files regarding the deaths of my sisters."

The room fell silent in a way that Harry's story from before just couldn't quite accomplish, and the blue skinned councilor very nearly sprinted away into an anteroom off the councilor's dais.

Harry smiled widely and with a disturbingly practiced gesture authorized the purchase of a few hundred dozen hectares of land on an obscure human colony. Thank god Asari politics were just as bitchy and murder-inducing as old earth sexists thought they would be.

/-/

**Citadel station, Closed council chambers - 06.04.2183**

"I don't like it."

Sparatus hurriedly coughed in order to suppress a laugh. Even Valern, who had the traditional Salarian even disposition, seemed to be trying to avoid laughing.

Tevos narrowed her eyes at her colleagues. The lack of personal support was entirely in line with who and what they were, the council was at best a poorly disguised attempt to justify the economic concerns of the big three races as being galactic wide issues, but that didn't mean the two people she had worked with for the last thirty years laughing at her stung any less.

With malice she shot back at the Turian, "Shut it, need I remind you of his knowledge of the Temple of Palaven?"

Sparatus managed to stop his poorly suppressed laughing and sobered very quickly, "We all have things we'd like to keep hidden."

Valern added his two credits with, "I don't," causing his fellows to just laugh outright.

Tevos broke off her giggling first, "Just because your people don't politic in the same way as ours hardly means you have nothing to hide. Kindly recall that the STG is hardly the _only_ intelligence agency in the galaxy."

A flanged voice brought up one of the group's concerns with the choice before them, "If he is actually friendly with Urdnot Wrex of all people, we may end up confronting the Krogan issue decades before our projections."

Each of the three councilors took a moment to consider the situation.

Harry James Potter.

In his first full day off human held ground, and he had a former spectre candidate with him, the daughter of a Quarian admiral, and a Krogan battlemaster that actually dated back to the end of the Krogan rebellion.

He idly brought up the temple of Palaven in open conversation, he brought a Krogan that personally killed Tevos' sisters (at her order), and his personal intervention was all that had stopped their former top agent from acquiring something he thought of as being significant to his sedition.

Potter had a lot of that whole 'impartial force for good' thing going. His record, both supplied by the alliance and the STG, confirmed significant mental illness as a likely result of PTSD as well as a hero complex confirmed through his actions both in and before the twenty second century.

Worst case scenario, he turns out to just be a halfway decent spectre. If he turns out good, the council made a good decision, they effectively replaced a bad asset, and pay rises all around. If he turns out bad, humanity loses face, and more discrete pay rises from individual governments.

Harry James Potter becoming a spectre looked to be a win-win, especially given that the average life expectancy of a new spectre was best measured in galactic standard months. Half the reason Saren had been top dog was due to the fact that he survived forty years of ops before evidently turning on his masters. They gave a pretty speech about spectres being born and not trained, but the reality of the galaxy was that the agent that could actually survive mercs, the shadow broker, and fear from their own government was few and far between.

Potter and his knowledge was a temporary threat at best. Really they might as well give him the position. Least they could do for a guy already practically on his death bed.

/-/

**Citadel station, Elevator to council chambers - 06.05.2183**

"NO."

"Yes."

"NO."

"Yes."

"NO."

"Yes! No. No. Wait, I'm not doing this. Anderson?"

Shepard turned to the wall and placed her forehead against it. The plas-steel was chilled and having spent thirty minutes with Potter she already had a headache. Anderson stood forward from where he had been watching Harry and Jane, clearing the grin from his face.

"Why are you even here, we told you why we were bringing you-"

"BECAUSE I DIDN'T THINK YOU IDIOTS WERE ACTUALLY GOING TO FOLLOW THROUGH! Yesterday I brought the Krogan that killed the Asari councilor's family with me to the council chambers, and last night I helped him assault a strip club in the lower wards to kill a man who called himself Fist! Why in the hell are you still hiring me! Is everyone here an idiot!?"

Tali bumped Garrus' shoulder from where they stood at the back of the elevator. He turned to her visor and caught the twin rising eyebrows and the wide smile. He answered with his own smile and shoved her shoulder back. Wrex was just lost in thought with a smile on his face, probably fantasizing about murdering a guy just ten hours previously. Williams was trying to talk Udina down from slamming his head into the elevator wall.

Harry continued to be a problem, "I would have never come if I didn't think you guys would wise up, I don't want to do this!"

Anderson put his arm around Harry's shoulders, "Well, look, no one's happy, BUT, it's too late so just deal with it."

Harry's shoulders fell, "The last time I agreed to take responsibility for something, my whole unit died to an alien we'd never seen before. The time before that I lost a whole planet. I don't want to do this again."

The elevator filled with silence for a few minutes before Wrex, of all the people in the elevator, spoke up, "Grow a quad, Punk."

Harry sighed deeply.

"Thanks Wrex."

/-/

"-both our first and last line of defense, the safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold."

"You are the first human spectre, Mr. Potter, this is an achievement for you and your species."

Harry stood alone before the council, looking profoundly unhappy. It was a small comfort to him that at least the press were legally obligated to _not_ cover this. His solitary form stood alone in front of the three alien dictators, one five foot eleven inch platform attempting to assert strength and authority in front of three people whose ground level alone rested above his head.

"For both myself and humanity; Thanks, I guess. We appreciate that you're taking us seriously and allowing us to take this next step in galactic scale politics, and..."

Harry visibly looked down at his hand where he had a cue card poorly hidden.

"...that you're giving us the chance to prove we're ready..."

Harry slipped the card into a pocket on his thigh and cursed as he looked at his arm. With a suck and a hiss, he broke the hermetic seal on his gauntlet, removing it and clearly displaying a bunch of writing in small print across his forearm.

"Da da da... errr... Please accept these thanks on the part of the Human Systems Alliance. We wish to represent a better tomorrow for the galactic community. Please accept further humble thanks on our part so we can..."

Harry reattached his left gauntlet and with another conspicuous noise detached his right gauntlet.

"hmm... in honor of this occasion I propose we meet quarterly at this time to keep our understanding of each other's political and social concerns current."

Harry reattached both his gauntlets and for the first time since his audience with the council began, actually made eye contact with the three beings at the focus of the hall.

"Look. Udina had a lot of things he wanted me to say. Humanity for that matter has a lot of things it wants me to say. Thats not me, I don't do that, which is actually a lesson you should have learned before we got involved and you swore me in, but whatever, I leave that kind of thing to you politician types."

Harry's posture straightened and for the first time since he had met the citadel council he actually looked the part of a spectre, "I've dealt with a lot of red tape, a lot of governments, a lot of 'black ops', and way more than my fair share of despots. II can say with authority that it's never worked out."

Now it must be noted that historically speaking, no spectre candidate had ever done anything other than accept their commission, especially in front of the council. Sure, some had reservations, some had qualms, and some had even gone as far as having had conflicting loyalties. Not a single one had ever valued their new position so little as to warn the council like Harry did.

"I've yet to meet a government worth respect, and I've yet to read a constitution worth the photons it has emitted, if I'm being honest."

At this point politicians from every species and interest group in Citadel space were staring at Harry.

"What I believe in is actually simple, and what I stand for is actually simpler. Everyone deserves a right to assent to their future. They can be indentured, they can be drug addicts, or they can be colonists working for some corporation. As long as every sentient being is given a choice for the future they hold, you will never hear from me. I swear on the blood flowing through my veins, and on my very life blood to uphold the sanctity of galactic self-determination above all else."

The period they normally used to establish their 'tells' and approve or disapprove was a lot longer than it usually was, Tevos was worried, and Valern didn't have nearly the amount of information he was comfortable with. Normally they knew what they were deciding on before it ever got to the public chambers.

Now though, they weren't so sure. Sparatus looked to his comrades and emphatically nodded yes. Valern's nod was less emphatic by orders of magnitude, but still present, which left Asari Councilor Tevos herself as the final gap between Harry James Potter and recognized spectre status. The monogender hesitated to give the final approval, before she finally fell in line with her fellows. As if any previous spectre had bargained over carte blanche legal status...

Three votes came in, three authorizations came up positive, and Harry James Potter cursed deeply and profoundly.

Harry James Potter. Spectre.

Ah, God Dammit, he had a new title. Fuck.

And twenty five square miles of farmland on Freedom's Progress.

_Fuck._


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

**Citadel station, Council chambers - 06.05.2183**

"Spectre. We did not empower you to add another peace keeper to the ranks keeping our galaxy safe. You have an assignment."

Valern leaned to Sparatus, interrupting his train of thought and apparently and whispering something into his...

Harry had to pause for a moment and consider Turian physiology. They didn't have visible ears. They had weird hexagonal plate things where an ear would be on a human. Was there an... ear hole? Not for the first time Harry idly wished he had studied medicine, but tech seemed like a lot more fun in the twenty-one hundreds. Maybe it was beneath their fringe-thing?

Did Turian moms tell their kids to make sure they washed behind their fringe?

He shook his head, and Valern seemed to send a group of files to Sparatus' console.

Tevos spoke up, "Spectre, you will hunt down any and all mention of Saren Arterius' work, with special focus on the targets designated 'Conduit' and 'Reaper'. We will forward you all intelligence we have on the locations Officer Vakarian's investigation has identified. C-Sec will continue to parse Arterius' reports and files for more information, for the time being we will reassign Officer Vakarian to you as a liaison."

The Asari sighed and reviewed something on the console in front of her.

"On a less formal note, if you plan on being even the slightest bit effective, you will need to purchase a ship and find a crew. As a rule, the council does not provide funding to spectres, no financial strings allow you to maintain the autonomy you need to operate effectively. Most spectres are primarily financed through their home governments. In your case, you aren't a part of the formal Systems Alliance structure so you lack that traditional source of support. However your... hmmm," the monogender blushed thoroughly, "your corporate holdings seem sufficient to see you through. If you should find yourself coming up short, contact requisitions through C-Sec and there may be some help for you."

Udina spoke up from his place at the side of the audience platform, "Humanity will not let our first spectre stand alone, nor can we allow him to rely on his less savory sources of income, " the ambassador didn't even try to hide his disgust, "Rest assured councilors, Potter will be operational inside twenty four hours."

"We expect good things from you, agent Potter. Not just because you killed our top agent either. Get to it."

For his first official act as what amounts to a galactic level James Bond, Harry turned to the Krogan next to him.

"Hey Wrex, you up for shooting some robots?"

/-/

**Citadel station, Human Embassy - 06.05.2183**

"So you're just giving me the ship?"

Harry was impressed. Not even he would have trusted him with an actual military ship, let alone some kind of super prototype thing like the Normandy. Just look at the damage he did on Shanxi with stolen air cars.

Anderson and Udina both shouted "NO!" at him from across the desk.

Harry nodded, that made a lot more sense.

Anderson leaned forward, "What we're doing is giving you nominal command of it. You direct it, you help crew it, in a pinch you give tactical advice, but actual command of the vessel will go to Lieutenant Commander Shepard."

Udina nodded almost violently next to Anderson.

"You need a combat effective, fast, and quiet ride in order for you to complete your mission. Especially given which end of the traverse you're going to be spending most of your time on. That is something the Alliance would be only too happy to provide, but we cannot and will not just give you the ship."

Harry put on a disappointed air, and surprisingly got a response to it from Udina.

"It's not that we don't trust you, it's to... keep you autonomous from the Alliance. Yes. No direct ties allows you to maintain impartiality as a spectre, which is just the face we want to show to the galactic community."

Harry was impressed again, who knew the man actually had such skill as a politician?

"What we're going to do is our best to keep everyone involved as covered as we can get," Anderson explained, "Udina is right in that you need to be as impartial as possible. At the same time we can't just give a few billion credits in practical R&D away. We'll have all the paperwork for you to be reinstated at the rank you held before completed and a keystroke from being implemented. As long as this all keeps quiet, we're good. If the alliance brass begin to ask questions we can't wave off with the 'spectre' card, then you get fully reinstated, backdated to today."

"It's the best way to make sure we all get what we need," Udina finished.

"Well on that note, there may be a few things I need. Namely a license to a few sets of Kassa Fabrication armor, and clearance to buy from Hahne Kedar's Shadow Works."

Anderson sat forward, "Now wait a minute, I've seen your armor. That's a custom suit of Ursa Mark Ten, you're asking for a few million credits for something that has only marginally better shielding and support, the Shadow works clearance was already on the table, but do you have any idea how much what you're asking for costs?"

"Hey! Before now my armor was just for the semi-annual attempts on the part of the universe to kill me. You've volunteered me to go off actively into combat, which is cool, but if you expect me to choose to run directly into gunfire you're buying me armor with better plating. The barriers on their Colossus line may only be marginally better, but don't think I haven't seen the specs on their new energized plating. I trust that more than I do any barrier."

Udina looked askance at the only soldier on his side of the bargaining, only for Anderson to begrudgingly nod.

The politician looked back at the spectre, "We can get you one. Your crew one the other hand is different. You've managed to attract three non-humans even, does Kassa even make armor for them?"

Harry rolled his eyes, "Just because they're not human doesn't mean no one shoots at them."

Anderson and Harry took their turn to meet eyes and share a moment. Politicians.

"Is there anything else ridiculous you want from us?"

Harry smiled widely, "Yes. I want a tank."

/-/

**Citadel station, Human Systems Alliance docking bay sector, SSV Normandy - 06.05.2183**

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya sat on an empty cargo container in the open bay of an experimental Human Systems Alliance frigate.

There were a couple parts of that sentence that didn't exactly jive with what she was used to, but when you go on pilgrimage you get used to not being used to things.

Back in the flotilla (IN NOT ON, stupid xenos always lost that distinction) it was a rare container indeed that was anything less than half full. When space is at a premium you learn pretty quickly to apply your RFID spray tags to things, and store them where you can. She lost the bubble she grew up in (damn humans and their hamster balls) and found it and the tag she sprayed four years later in a crate on a repurposed Batarian mining vessel. Bit of a trip from the Rayya.

Ah, the Rayya. She still missed it. All of the air filters in her hab section were repurposed. Not all that uncommon given that the last authentic Quarian engineering died three hundred years ago. What it meant though was that everywhere in her 'neighborhood' there was a constant rattle. Loose filters, too tight filters that corroded around the seals, whatever, the point was that it was never silent, silence indicated a lack of airflow and a serious problem. Ever since her common name moved from vas Rayya to nar Rayya she was constantly confronted by the silence that these Others preferred their systems to run in.

It was easy to see the how and why behind how insular most Quarian got. These xenos were just weird. Or maybe Quarian were weird. Three centuries afloat in space might do that to you. Anyway.

The last part of the sentence that weirded her out was the most important one. Why in the name of the home world was she on an experimental alliance frigate?

First, the rumors of Geth beyond the Perseus Veil (Stupid name for a nebula, and why did all of the big names on the astrogation charts end up in Asari?) then she finds one of the things when the ship she booked passage on stops to dump it's static charge on a moon over the third planet out in the Hydra system.

Second, she gets the bright idea to hack one.

Third, when she gets lucky enough to pull literally any data (from the banks located in the thing's knee of all places) she finds data on one of the galaxy's only publicly operating spectres.

Fourth, she tries to sell it to the Shadow Broker of all people, only to get shot at when it seems like Saren got to her contact first.

Then she gets rescued by one of the single most insane beings that had to have ever existed, and instead of the doctor the weirdo insists she go see, she joins him on some kind of galactic-level spy campaign, on a heavily classified and experimental Human Systems Alliance frigate.

Tali kicked her legs out, letting the just under one standard gee pull them back down to hit the side of the crate.

Wait.

That was four impacts on the container, and unless she made the mistake of having a drink at a Turian bar again but decided on elective surgery this time, she only had two legs...

Ah...

"Whatcha thinking about?"

The insane one.

"Well, for one, how did you manage to find a set of Kassa fabrication armor in my exact size?"

The insane one looked down at the box they were sitting on, his eyes widening comically as if seeing it for the first time.

"Oh, well, funny story."

"Three different humans have said that to me, and it has yet to be a funny story."

"Oh don't get me started on idiomatic expressions. It was bad enough when I only had to deal with them in one language. Damn yanks. You ever studied Asari?"

"No, and you're avoiding the question."

His shoulders dropped and he looked away from her. He was embarrassed!

"Well I never got you to that doctor, so I took a couple of scans of you and ran them by a... Well I guess you could call her a friend of mine. She knows quite a bit about Quarian physiology and assured me you were doing okay. In exchange I figured I'd buy you a bit better enviro suit and we might call it even. Especially since you would get a gift and I wouldn't have to tell you that I know what you look like naked."

Again, there were a couple things about what she just heard that didn't quite jive. She was going to start at the last bit and work her way forward. A subtle gesture lowered the volume on her vocalizer to a whisper.

"YOU'VE SEEN ME NAKED!?"

He winced.

"Err.. yes?"

"HOW! THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE, I ALWAYS TUNE MY KINETIC BARRIERS TO STOP SCANS FROM PERVERTS LIKE YOU, JUST LIKE MY MOM TAUGHT ME!"

"Okay, well, err, my tech isn't necessarily _better_ than what you're familiar with, it's just a starship grade submillimeter to X-ray scanner compressed to a much more mobile platform. If you promise not to shoot me I'll give you one too?"

Tali was trying to not freak out. There were already a lot of things she wasn't familiar with here. It'd been a hell of day already.

"And, in my defense, you are now wearing a set of Colossus Mark Ten armor customized for you specifically by Kassa Fabrication. That suit can take a glancing blow from one of the old alliance Grizzly main guns and only go down to sixty percent shield strength. Somewhere around here there's a full container of spare parts for it too."

Colossus Mark Ten suits ran at the same basic cost of a brand new corvette class military vessel from any of the big three races. It wasn't like she hadn't read the manual and wondered who made the most expensive mistake of their life.

"How in the hell did you afford this, this apology of yours? And for that matter why does everyone always cringe when they talk about what corporation you work for? Who the hell are you?"

Harry finally took his turn to blush.

"If I tell you do you promise to not shoot me?"

Tali had to pause for a moment and think. Less than a standard day ago this guy saved her from an ambush that more than likely would have cost her life. She could handle herself, but she wasn't delusional enough to think she could take three bounty hunters in a spectre's pay while alone in a dark alley. Said guy allowed her to give the citadel council probably its first positive impression of any Quarian in almost a century. Then he, misguided as it was, assured that she was healthy and bought her an enviro suit that would probably still be top of the line when it got passed down to her grandchildren.

All told they were probably even for the naked thing, but it was by a narrow margin.

She breathed deeply and let it out slowly. The new smells of her armor were strange but comforting.

How bad could it be?

"Sure."

"Okay, see when I left Earth, and this was like seventy five or eighty years ago, I was on bad terms with the people I left behind. I wasn't exactly welcome back. So in response to essentially losing my home world and everything I had, I decided to head to the nearest space station and get royally, amazingly, and murderously drunk. It was fun so I made a bit of a tradition of it. A few years after humanity made first contact I relive my tradition, and I came fully to consciousness three days later only to find myself completely broke but heavily invested in a new venture called Fornax. It must have seen like a good idea at the time, though how I got a live comm link to Kahje I still don't understa-"

"YOU'RE A PARTNER IN THE GALAXY'S LARGEST PORN PRODUCER!"

He winced again, and the Tali began caressing her boot knife at the thought that a pornographer had medical grade scans of her naked form.

From the wall behind the pair a speaker crackled to life, and at a low volume the voice of the ship's pilot issued forth.

"Did I hear that right boss, you're a partner in Fornax?"

Harry looked at the speaker with a strange expression on his face.

"How much of that did you hear, Joker?"

Without any detectable note of shame the pilot responded, "I have a custom VI that monitors all open mics on the ship for the words 'naked', 'sex', 'porn', 'filthy sanchez', and 'coffee'. Now. You, Fornax, spill."

Tali pulled her head wrap down over her visor. Maybe if she couldn't see any of it, it would all go away?


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

**Traffic orbit around Citadel Station, SSV Normandy - 06.05.2183**

Harry stood at the helm of the ship, in front of the galaxy map, his minions doing his bidding and running everything around him. It may have been a modified Turian design, but he loved the hell out of it. Everything reminded him of that fourth or fifth Star Trek reboot, the one that came out in the 2120s.

Then there was the version he co-produced via extranet in 2164 that netted his company more than a few million credits from the old diehard fans and the curiously large Elcor fan base. They had a thing for Asari painted green, who knew green women were still going to be hot?

He shook his head and refocused. Raising his arm to point dramatically at the galaxy map, he channeled his inner William Shatner as he ordered in his strongest tone, "Joker, take us out!"

...

"Uh, boss?"

"Yes joker?"

"Where exactly am I supposed to be taking us out to?"

"Shit."

Shepard face palmed from her console to the side of the map, and unseen to most of the bridge crew Joker was laughing his ass off in the pilot seat.

Harry opened a channel to Garrus in the cargo bay, "Vakarian! Where the hell are we going?"

"Noveria! Now leave me alone, I'm calibrating!"

"Right, Joker you heard the man, let's go."

"Right away boss."

Jane considered resigning. The bridge crew was laughing, but she could already see this being the worst assignment she had ever gotten. That includes the time the other N-school candidates found out she had never had alcohol before and told the instructors. They thought that wood grain was a good proof to start out with and Jane spent two months blind before the med station could regrow the parts of her eyes and liver that died.

/-/

**High orbit over Noveria, SSV Normandy - 06.09.2183**

"SSV Normandy your arrival was not scheduled, our defense grid is armed and tracking you. State your business."

Joker rolled his eyes. Even if they weren't a registered Alliance military vessel, it was illegal for them to just shoot down a ship looking for port. Even on a corporate world.

"Noveria control, we hold a council spectre on citadel business."

There was a noticeable pause. Harry would bet his wand control contacted the Noveria head office, and they were trying to figure out if they could swing some kind of legal chicanery to stop him from landing.

Unfortunately for them, Vakarian had been kind enough to point out that no planetary corp would be pleased with a spectre inspecting a now formally disavowed spectre's holdings. Harry looked into it, and the only way they could attempt to legally bar a spectre on legitimate council business from entry was if they went and declar-

"Noveria control to SSV Normandy, we cannot clear you for landing. There has been a catastrophic containment failure at a biological hot lab in our Peak fifteen facility. We have declared a planetary quarantine at this time and cannot allow anyone entry."

Harry sighed, yep, that.

Joker looked at him, eyebrows raised, and from flight lieutenant Moreau's other side Shepard mirrored the expression.

Harry shook his head, "Noveria control, I think if you look through your records you'll find that the SSV Normandy is licensed and rated for retrieval and operations inside a biologically hot zone."

"Stand by."

Joker muted the connection and looked up at Harry questioningly. Shepard again mirrored his expression.

"What? It's not like Citadel records on corporate certifications are that hard to spoof. Tali could do it in her sleep. I had a friend run the file changes last night for us after Garrus mentioned they'd try something. And that fancy new armor I bought for the ground crew is all rated for heavy combat in hot zones."

Neither of them looked away, or changed their expressions.

"What!?"

The speakers buzzed back to life, "Noveria control to SSV Normandy, we can confirm your ratings. Sending coordinates to docking facility now."

Harry unmuted their side, "Hold on that, Noveria control. Is the Peak fifteen facility registered to Binary Helix?"

The operator audibly sighed, "Confirmed, Normandy."

"Requesting coordinates directly to Peak fifteen facility then. We're all busy, no need to waste time."

"SSV Normandy, Noveria head office requests confirmation that you are aware of current penalties for corporate espionage, and that all research at Peak fifteen is covered under said laws."

Harry just closed his eyes, "Good god, man. I'm a council spectre. The paperwork would _really_ suck, but I could walk into your head office, send all of their files directly to their competitors piss on and then burn all of their OSDs, and then shoot everyone in the building. Legally. Why don't you just send those coordinates our way and relay that message to Noveria head office."

"Confirmed, Normandy. Noveria control out."

Joker just smiled widely and routed the ship to a drop zone outside the lab, Shepard strongly contemplated weeping.

/-/

**Landfall on Noveria - 06.09.2183**

As they closed with the location of Peak fifteen, the Normandy began receiving some of the emergency signals from the lab. The storm over that section of the planet blocked the non-hardline signals from the lab's surviving personnel from bouncing off the satellite network over the planet to the head offices. When the Normandy got below the bulk of the storm, real information began rolling in. Omni tool emergency signals were activated across the facility, the only ones reporting living beings attached to them were centered around an area their beacons referred to as "Rift station".

A file package from the facility contained a full schematic that showed the Rift station being secured over a massive artificial cavern, it being dropped into the cavern being another layer to the lab's isolation protocols. One emergency beacon also contained information on a 'neutron purge' protocol.

Harry took the full ground crew down with him, a few discrete expansion charms and highly focused notice-me-nots kept anyone from question why four humans, a Quarian, a Turian, and a Krogan could all fit inside a tank they came close to outweighing.

Since he left Earth he got more use out of notice-me-not charms than almost any other piece of magic. It was probably the only reason why he hadn't seen the probing he had joked with Anderson about. As funny as it was, Harry got a small trill of fear going into a biological research facility.

At least he was locked out of this lab and not locked in.

Joker dropped the Mako on a forty or so meter wide stretch just around the corner from the entrance to the lab. It was a tight target to hit, but Moreau assured them that he could make it. Confidence _had _been adversely when rocket turrets of a very strange design (notably not on the plans) opened fire on the Normandy as it entered extreme range. Low powered rail shots quickly left craters in their place before the rocket fire could do more than leave soot on the Normandy's paint job.

The pilot's somewhat insane crooning to 'his baby' over 'what those mean little turrets did to you' followed the ground team as they moved to enter the facility.

They entered through the main cargo reception area. Who or whatever compromised the facility had done a decent job. The main doors were blocked by a ruined civilian grade Grizzly, leaving both entrance and exit to a much smaller personnel entrance. At least they wouldn't have to fight any of the massive tank platforms they had seen on the way in.

Wrex led the charge through the airlock and into the bay proper, but as the inner door opened Harry's eyes latched on to the one perfect moment where he stood silhouetted against the bay.

The Krogan's massive frame, two and a half meters and half a ton of armed fight, against the artfully arranged backdrop of three Geth platforms. Two of the huge red ones from Eden Prime, and a pure as the driven snow white on that was half again as tall.

So much for not having to fight any of the massive tank platforms.

/-/

**Peak Fifteen Lab Facility, Noveria - 06.09.2183**

The administration VI that coordinated the facility, went by the name Vira, was physically disconnected from any useful system control. For their purposes it was irrelevant though because they had the daughter of a Quarian admiral with them.

Modern Quarian engineering supplied the ingenuity of three hundred years experience in jury-rigging, repurposing, and the occasional stripping for parts. When she learned her trade she did so by cracking security doors on ships of every description to escape minders from her dad and hang out with friends. As a teenager she helped with prepping and refining loads of omni-gel for civilian mechanics and refitters. Before she left on her pilgrimage she was one of those refitters and mechanics.

If that skill weren't enough, Harry spent the few days' transit before planet fall whipping up a Potter Omni-tool Mark One. Military grade omni-tools in the modern age took the form of a centimeter thick forearm sheathe, a little bulky, but enough volume to hold the mass effect field emitters that allowed their crazy miracle tech to work.

A Potter Mark one was _much_ larger on the inside than it was on the outside, which meant that not only could he double density of emitters in the most sophisticated model on the market, but the emitters he used put out fields of the same strength as ones used in the average APC. Separately expanded sections held power generation and a hugely expanded processing capacity, both cooled with magic.

The group passed through the facility as if the doors weren't there. They avoided security consoles entirely, Tali just ripped power lines out of the walls next to the more ornery doors and provided completely local power and authority for all their needs. In less than ten minutes they were on the internal tram and about to knock on the door to Rift station.

The farther they went through the lab, the more information they got on what they were going into. Good data security software is one thing, but effectively policing what people sent to friends and family over the extranet, as well as what they wrote in their personal files was quite another.

Their most significant overall target in the team's little campaign was Asari Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, and she was in the building. She apparently showed up with a curious amount of baggage, and with a rather significant amount of personal bodyguards, both noted on several times by several different, now dead, people.

An interesting pattern if nothing else.

At any rate, the primary objective before they entered the building had been anything and everything on the servers in the labs. Everything significant was held in a specially secured room in an offshoot of the hot labs in rift station. When the landlines to the Noveria head office were cut, the landlines from the servers to the rest of Peak fifteen's computers had been similarly cut, so the team was pretty firmly resolved on going there.

With their new intel, that objective changed. As far as they had been able to tell, Benezia was deeply linked into whatever business Saren had been working and any actual intel on what the hell was going on was a top priority. The man may have been unlucky enough to cross the path of a rather annoyed Harry Potter, but such luck did not speak of his overall operational skill. Despite days of data mining and correlation from every report the man had ever submitted, C-Sec and Harry's crew were both only fractionally farther now than they had been when they first found out. All of their conclusions were inferences based on the assumption that the location data he had reported was correct, or that he had not been lying about the identities of the locals he had colluded with on any of his missions.

It was hardly a stretch to think that a man that betrayed the will of the citadel council and the hierarchy may have lied at some point.

Thankfully at this point it would soon be immaterial. Benezia awaited.

When the team finally breached Rift station, they were both amused and concerned by how the lab was laid out. Mapping and area layout stolen from omni tools along the way showed that from the tram there were three routes: a door leading directly into the heaviest security research area, an elevator down into the main floor of the station, and another elevator leading directly down to the hot labs.

Harry had a feeling. One of those tingling sensations in his balls that signaled one of three things. He was onto something big, he was about to get shot, or he had testicular cancer and needed to get checked out. Hoping it was one of the first two reasons, he made one of those decisions that he was probably going to regret.

"Err, Wrex and Shepard, with me. Something tells me the high security zone has something fun in it that we'll get to play with. Vakarian, Zorah, Williams, and Alenko, you all go straight for the servers. Don't stop for anything, collect survivors if you find them but that data is the target."

Alenko, who Harry had met only briefly on the ride to Noveria, was the one to raise issue.

"Shouldn't we stick together? We're good at what we do, but an Asari matriarch who has lived longer than the rest of us put together is a big target."

Harry waved him off, "If I were a millennial monogender with tentacles on my head working to overthrow a galactic civilization, I'd be in the secure lab facility. Wrex, Shepard and I are far more likely to find her than you are. Besides which, I have it on _really_ good authority that after about six centuries life really dries out. If you find her just talk to her and try to be interesting, she'll keep you alive for that if nothing else."

Harry collected the N7 and the Krogan in his wake, with a quick gesture he simply vanished the security door in his way and moved forward, "You kids will be fine, toodles!"

/-/

Harry's three man squad advanced down a long and mostly straight corridor. Behind them Tali'Zorah's gentle cursing in keelish sounded out against the bumps and hums of a normal facility.

The Krogan followed Harry and idly scratched at the edge of his crest where a human's left ear would be. He wondered if he would get to shoot another robot today, if the mess back on the Normandy would be serving 'enchiladas' again, and how the insane human could accurately described living past about six hundred years.

Lt. Commander Shepard was a lot more focused on how and why Harry had so distinct an opinion on what he would do if her were a thousand year old Asari bent on galactic instability and insurrection.

Harry was just genuinely curious why anyone would leave a direct path from their most secure lab to the tram station. He concluded that everyone was getting stupider over time, and that he was just lucky to have been born at the height of intellectualism in the year of our lord nineteen eighty.

/-/

When the team finally got to the lab, Harry got to see the other end of the insanity of modern humanity. On the one hand, straight paths without manned or unmanned checkpoints from transit out to the most sensitive location. On the other, and isolation lab that was literally suspended over the rift that the whole station was named for.

The transition was seamless, barely any resonance from where the hall went from being attached to the whole station to being several explosive bolts from falling nearly four kilometers straight down.

A walkway connected to the hallway they entered from and edged the room. At the center was an isolation tank that held some kind of chitinous crab monster, a small section of walkway connecting the tank to the ring around the edge and supporting a number of computer consoles.

An Asari stood alone in the room, apparently resting her head against the glass. A small wind whipped through the room, a ghost of the storm still roaring outside.

Harry understood virtually none of what he was seeing, but somehow it all felt rather familiar.

"Benezia?"

She started and looked wildly over at the three beings in the door.

Wrex smacked Harry for giving up the advantage. Shepard smacked him in the same place a second later.

"Hey! What the hell! No reason to not be civil about this!"

Benezia walked back from the tank to the edge, standing in front of the three armed people.

"Not the back-up, then."

"Not exactly."

Harry slapped Wrex's arm and indicated off to the left, he took the cue and began circling around.

"Who are you then?"

Harry smiled and stared directly into her eyes, "I'd give you my name, but honestly you haven't heard of me. Depending on who your friends are back on Thessia you might have heard of my work, but something tells me you're not much into roses."

Benezia smiled, "An earthling with an appreciation of gardening then. You know something of the power of creation. Of shaping life, turning it to happiness or despair."

"Your creature there?"

From across the room Harry caught a word from Wrex, a growl really.

"Rachni."

Shepard cursed from beside him, but Harry felt compelled only to raise his eyebrows.

"Resurrecting a dead race. Wow. I've done some stuff in my time, but bringing back the Rachni. I'm actually impressed."

Benezia seemed bemused, "Her children were to be ours. Raised to hunt and slay Saren's enemies."

Harry sucked in a breath from between his teeth, "Now that's a tricky prospect. I've seen it attempted before. Even when it works, never quite works out how you'd expect. Raising the child of your enemy."

Benezia inclined her shoulders just the slightest fraction, a very tiny and elegant shrug.

He continued, "And then your words there, Saren's enemies. Saren. Not these Reaper fellows?"

She twitched far less elegantly than she shrugged, it seemed. Harry just looked away.

"Motherfucker!"

Benezia was visibly taken aback, her biotics flaring around her tight to her skin, "Excuse me!"

Harry just leaned against the wall and slowly removed his wand from his gauntlet, when it was out he made eye contact with Shepard, who looked completely out of her depth.

"It's not her!"

Shepard gave him a dead look before responding, "What do you mean it's not her?"

Harry waved his wand wildly as he threw his hands in the air, "She's a nobody, a patsy, dumb bitch might as well be a drone, we're almost not even talking to her!"

In front of both of them the purple swirls of the matriarch's biotic power grew wider and more powerful.

He gave her a glance, "You're a pawn, honey."

Lowering his gaze he continued, "God damn it. This shit is never fucking simple, is it?" Harry folded his arms and stared into Shepard's eyes, trying to impress upon her his dissatisfaction, "Do you know what I would give for an honest to god crime syndicate? Or just a conspiracy, it could even be a crazy human conspiracy, I don't care."

Shepard's expression did not change, "What do you mean it's not her?"

Harry looked away, "Something's running her like an engineer's repair drone. Sure, when she talks it's her words or whatever, but behind that she's empty over there. Nothing going on behind those eyes but some cheap wit and the will of something big and nasty."

Benezia's expression tightened and the swirling energy around her increased in density before concentrating in her palms. As Harry and Shepard spoke she drew an arm back, making as if to throw something, and-

And then the stock of Wrex's shotgun impacted on the back of her head just beneath where the spine met the skull.

Matriarch Benezia went out like a light.

The Krogan's gravelly voice added it's two cents, "What are we doin' about that thing?"

One of the massive dino-frogs three fingers indicated the massive bug that seemed to be staring at them. Some kind of terrifying tentacle waved weakly at them from inside the isolation tank.

"My answer to that question depends on your answer to two of mine."

"Alright, Punk."

"Is that the last one in existence?"

"Probably."

"Do they taste good?"

The tentacle stopped waving and the whole bug went absolutely rigid.

The Krogan smiled widely and wiggled a hand side to side, "Decent enough, better than Varren steak but not by much."

"Then we're probably gonna let it go."

The bug noticeably lost tension, which is saying something given that it was the last of a species that no one had ever gotten close enough to analyze the body language of and survive.

"You know my people's eventual extinction is due to those bugs, on top of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Krogan on worlds across the galaxy."

Harry leaned off the wall and began making his way to the tank, "In fairness Wrex, I'd really blame the Dalatrasses and the Primarch before I went with the Rachni, but that's just me."

Inside the iso tank there was just barely enough room for the Rachni to turn and properly face the pair of humans, Krogan, and thoroughly unconscious Asari. It was no longer waving a tentacle at them. If Harry had to guess, it looked... expectant?

How in the hell could he even begin to guess that?

It was a bug.

He literally had a better chance of guessing galactic lotto numbers. Okay, not better, he had done that a few times by accident, but there was a reason he stopped drinking and going on the extranet at the same time. Thank god for alternate identities.

"Alright love, something tells me you're not part of the standard translation implant. All the same, you can understand us, can't you?"

A tentacle began waving up and down. Harry was going to guess yes.

"Cool. Now I know you guys can shoot acid, but since I'm on your side, no shooting me, yeah?"

More waving that Harry was really hoping was a positive.

"Okay, I know how we can communicate easily, but I'm gonna need to cut a hole in this tank, so let's no one freak out."

Harry flash formed a blade out of omni gel, and speared the tank. With deliberate movements he began curing a hole about half a meter in diameter, but before he could finish Shepard put a hand on his arms.

"Is this a good idea? These things almost conquered known space, we needed Wrex's people to turn the tide, and no offense Wrex-" "Some taken." "-but we all know how that worked out. Shouldn't we just blow the bolts on that container and be done with it? Isn't that the safe and responsible thing here?"

Harry looked at where her arm rested against his, "Maybe, but let me ask you something, you ever committed genocide before? Like have you ever killed the last of a species?"

"Never!"

"But you want me to do it? See here's the thing, where I came from back on earth the population for nearly every life form was beyond low. The strongest species we had numbered in the thousands. Between four wars and more terrorists than I care to remember I was present for three extinctions, and I caused one. I'm not gonna cause another unless this thing over here is a serious asshole."

In the tank next to them a tentacle knocked on the glass while two more made a distinctly placating gesture.

Harry smiled widely, "Besides! I've never read an insects mind before, that Skeeter bitch notwithstanding, this will be fun!"

/-/

It was a terrible old joke, but it was really empty in the bug things mind. As with nearly everything mental (and Harry once successfully used legilimency on a rock so he considered himself kind of an expert) it wasn't quite that simple. The empty space was massive, consuming, and aggressive. It was a blaring hole in in the bug's mental world where a lot of things should have been.

From nowhere (well, somewhere, but in a world literally defined by the mental whim of a being he had met fifteen minutes ago, Harry wasn't going to guess) a sound filled the air. The sound brought color, and texture. It brought smells and a taste too.

Kinda minty.

Suddenly the massive chitinous monster in the iso tank was in front of him, and in defiance of everything he understood about bugs, the minty smell grew stronger.

"Hi!"


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

[A/N]: This one is a little short, it's kinda just me completing the thought from last chapter.

**High security lab, Peak Fifteen, Noveria – 06.09.2183**

Wild tones resonated in the wide open space, the notes filling the world with color and giving it form. Grey formlessness became fiddler's green became an opera house became the shitty apartment Harry lived on for a few years before he gave the ICW the finger and left for space.

Harry wasn't the biggest music buff, but what he was hearing was damn beautiful and-

Was that Mary Had a Little Lamb?

Harry shook his head and stopped being distracted, "Hey, this isn't exactly the first time I've done a mind meld with an ancient and unknown intelligence, alright. It's my third time, if I'm going to be honest."

Harry stared off into the distance for a moment before shaking his head and refocusing again.

"The point is, we're doing one of those Nietzsche 'you stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back into you' things. I know you can read me to the same extent I'm reading whatever this is," Harry gestured idly at his surroundings, which were now somehow a perfect representation of an Elcor brothel, "So if you could just stick to English, I'd really appreciate it. That said, yours is my favorite hello I've ever come across in the history of communication."

The surroundings settled on a large featureless white plane, and the bug thing in front of him looked oddly concerned for a moment before responding, "Your words are colorless, low, and limiting to us."

Harry decided that Rachni must have a well-developed sense of the dramatic, as it waited a long moment before continuing.

"We do not like this."

Harry just shook his head, "All the same, you can speak my language a _lot_ easier than I can attempt yours. I could try, but it'd all just come out in rock and roll and off-shades of silver. Also there's that whole I control your fate thing, so not to be a dick here, but it'd be nice if you could just do me a favor."

"We... see wisdom in your words."

There was a comfortable silence between the man and the tank-like insectoid monster. Harry could sense that she (it? Can a human understanding of bipolar genders be accurately applied to bug people? Harry had deliberately stayed away from those websites on Earth's internet, so he didn't really know.) was building up a thought and translating it for him, so he was content to wait.

"We thank you for not silencing the song of the one with us here before you. Hers was a beautiful melody, a small voice struggling against a sour yellow note. We think you will find a way to raise her voice, and you will benefit from it."

"I've met others whose voices have been hidden by similar, err, sour yellow notes. I will do my best."

"We thank you."

This time the thoughtful silence belonged to Harry.

"Who are you? Are you different than the others like you who fought the rest of the galaxy?"

The Rachni had some kind of multi-part, compound, squee-gee mouth thing. On top of that it had a few too many strangely luminescent eyes, and it communicated telepathically so it had no set body language. How the hell that kind of face could look introspective was beyond him, but it did. Mental things had to be taken with a certain degree of suspension of disbelief, and if there was one thing Harry had skill with, it was self-delusion.

"We are the last singer. The last Mother. We sing for those left behind by the bittersweet notes of time. Now though, our song is our own. When our Mother sang to us from before we left our shell, her song and the song of all Mothers was plucked and hummed from beneath an oily shadow. When we sang of war, our song was not our own."

"Was it the same yellow note that fought the one I saved?"

"Not the same, no notes are ever the same, but the same instrument was plucked by the same player to make both."

"Can you tell me more? More about the player? Do you know anything more?"

"Once we would have been one among many, but now we are the last echo of the singing planet. There are no more listeners and no more repeaters that we may query, space is silent. We can only sing of what we have heard, and all songs sung to us before we left the shell are as dreams."

"Did your mothers sing at all of the source of the note, did any find a way to fight it?"

Again with the introspective bug eyes. Harry really preferred Tali's wringing hands or Garrus' annoying clicking his flange or whatever it was called, at least his mind was capable of grasping that.

"We can tell you much, but not enough. We hear songs from outside our time, songs like your Moon heard and sang, we can tell you of one of the last notes those that came before played, but we cannot say why. It is your mission to find these notes already. This we know. Our song may bolster yours, but without yours our song will surely fail."

"Hold on, my moon?"

"We see from your memories, your moon is named Luna."

Harry smiled. His moon _was_ named Luna.

That made the decision kind of easier. Invoking Luna was almost always a way to get on his good side. She was the best of him.

"Okay, friend. I believe you. We need to work out the hows and whys, at least I'm authorized to act in the name of the Council. I don't suppose you know who I should sing to get them to do my paperwork for me?"

/-/

Tali entered the isolation room, limping just a little, and was completely taken aback to see how everything was suspended above the rift. It was a pretty big sight for a person that grew up on a ship, a contained space, but one whose size registered in kilometers.

Of course the human and the Krogan sitting on the ground playing cards made another interesting sight.

"Jane? Wrex? Are you playing poker, and why is Potter holding hands with a giant bug?"

The Krogan smile wickedly as he played what appeared to be a full house, cleaning Shepard out of... were they betting omni-gel units?

Whatever.

"Tali, say hello to the last Rachni in existence. Harry's evidently doing some kind of Asari mind meld with it to figure out if it's okay, or if it's gonna try to kill everyone again."

You could hear the poor Quarian's indignation even through the voice module, "And you're just sitting there playing poker while he does this?"

Insane pervert or not, Potter was captain and there were forms to be obeyed.

Wrex looked up from his gathered winnings, "We were worried for a while there, poked our guns in the hole he made," a thumb indicating where Harry was staring into the thing's eyes and holding some kind of slimy tentacle thing, "but after about half an hour where neither of them blinked or moved, we gave up."

Jane began dealing a new hand while Tali stood dumbstruck.

"You mean the rest of us fought off waves of... of Rachni! And a bunch of mercs, some Geth platforms, and a bunch of Asari commandos, we primed a neutron purge even! And you all have been sitting here playing poker while the captain does some kind of spiritual communion with a big bug!"

"Yep."

Jane popped the 'P' in a way that grated on every nerve Tali had, and a couple that her enviro suit simulated for her.

"And you Wrex, you're okay with that? I mean a Rachni?"

The much larger being snorted, "So far Punk's been on the level with everything he promised me. I got to shoot robots, I stomped a few Rachni, he bought me a nice set of armor, and we completed a contract from the shadow broker, and for the first time in sixteen decades I've done all of the above completely legally. I'm willing to let him explain."

Tali suppressed the urge to harrumph. She'd done it before and the vocalizer just did not put the sound out correctly, which only made her madder.

Thankfully before anyone could feel anything more than a strong temptation to shoot their squad mates, a mostly unwelcome voice barged into the conversation, "I'll have you know she's not just a big bug, she's also a huge fan of The Clash as it turns out. Rachni love punk rock, who knew!"

Jane shuffled her hand and collected Wrex's cards, "Given that no one has ever spoken to one before now, no one."

"Pity, they're excellent conversationalists! Pro-tip, never ask a Rachni how something tastes. Bug taste buds are fucked up."

Harry casually stood and waved his wand at the cage containing the bug. It slumped unnaturally where it stood, as if knocked out, before shrinking alongside its cage. As it grew smaller the explosive bolts broke from where they were connected to the cage, leaving it floating until it was the size of a small fish tank.

Harry brought the cage over and folded it under an arm.

"C'mon, lads. We'll fire off the neutron purge to get rid of all of these nasty bugs running around here. We have all kinds of fun things to tell the council, and then all kinds of fun things to go search and later set on fire!"

Wrex was blasé.

Jane was fantasizing about a glass of Skyllian whisky, and wondering if David Anderson knew he was damning her to alcoholism or insanity when he gave her this assignment.

Tali was struck speechless behind her faceplate, but in her defense organic acid had almost melted through her right boot and she'd almost been shot three times that day.

Harry just headed out, singing under his breath, "A nuclear error but I have no fear, 'Cause London is drowning and I, I live by the river..."

/-/

**High orbit over Noveria, SSV Normandy – 06.09.2183**

"This is a joke, right? You're joking right now."

The Asari took a page from the spectre's book, and called over an assistant to flash form her a chair. The assistant made her a tall stool so she could still comfortably be in the FTL comm unit's pick up, but still rest her head in her hands.

Harry smiled perhaps a bit too cheerily.

"What!? I made peace. Is peace not desirable? We gain a _very_ unique ally and source of technology and information. I mean nearly all of the tech they use to manipulate eezo has a biological component, how cool is that!"

Councilor Valern's eyes visibly brightened, and he forwarded a series of after action report from the Rachni war to Harry over the FTL link.

Sparatus spoke up, "What assurance can you offer that the Rachni war won't be repeated? How many generations until they overrun the galaxy?"

"You're asking a good question, but also the wrong question. In this case what you all should be concerning yourselves with is the mission you gave me. The question is what we learned about Saren and Matriarch Benezia. In that arena, I have good news. They were working with the Geth to interrogate the queen, because they wanted something only she could give them, but what could a bug queen that had been alive in the galaxy for less than a decade have, that a spectre and sentient machines don't?"

The councilors looked on, mostly with anticipation, they enjoyed a little showmanship apparently. Well Sparatus and Valern did.

"Ready for this? Astrogation data. Everything else about the Rachni is in the public domain, or hopelessly out of date. Their tech, their DNA, their strategies, and even their standard battle doctrine. The only thing of theirs we don't have is their astrogation data, Valern will back me up here, the theory was that a queen led every fleet from deep inside a Rachni held world, and no queen was ever taken alive. Now! Raise your hand if you've recently made friends with a Rachni queen!"

Harry raised his hand proudly, and frowned when none of the others did.

Harry lowered his hand, "You're familiar with an Asari melding, yeah? You know how the joining of their nervous systems can allow the passage of information. It's well recorded, not admissible as court evidence, yada yada yada. No offense Tevos."

She looked offended, but Harry just decided to move on.

"I... melded... with the queen, and I learned a lot. They are sensitive to other's minds at an incredible level, far and away more than anything or anyone I've ever encountered before, but it leaves them open to manipulation through those same means. It's why they struck before. Give me some time, and I can protect her from that same manipulation. I'll set them up in an asteroid field, as long as you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone."

Tevos spoke again, having never looked up from her hands, "Thank you for your report, spectre, keep us apprised.

[A/N]: Next on Getting Too Old For This: Harry romances a thresher maw, Benezia is de-programed, and accidental magic causes Joker to be possessed by a demon from the second circle of hell RESULTING IN NO CHANGE OF ANY KIND ON THE NORMANDY.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

[A/N]: Another really short one. We'll get to Virmire and more fun shit next one, it'll be a lot longer I think. Depends on how it writes, but things should get progressively more real from here. I'll admit, Saren and Benezia's fates were both spur of the moment things, but those decisions both really mess with what constitutes a reasonable progression of events. I'm still gonna use a lot of canon, but things are probably gonna get freaky-deaky from here as I try to keep everything reasonable. This is kind-of a crack-fic, but I'd like to think it still mostly makes sense.

In any case, drop me a review, let me know what you think.

**Exodus Cluster, Close orbit over Mass Relay, SSV Normandy – 06.09.2183**

Harry clapped his hands and rubbed them together, "Okay! So I have good news and bad news, what do you want first?"

His audience looked at one another in a confused manner. One was a three hundred fifty kilo bug, the other was an Asari matriarch tied to a chair and gagged.

"Bad news then? Okay. You both have very similar problems, in that you are each vulnerable to mental control, or are currently under a form of mental control. The good news you ask? Well, the good news is actually for other people. Kind of a lie there. Sorry about that."

Harry paced from side to side in front of his new students (victims), behind him the ground team slowly trickled into the bay. Joker had warned everyone that Harry was up to something with their two guests, and it was generally agreed that watching Harry and a giant bug deprogram a brainwashed Asari matriarch would be, at minimum, very entertaining.

"What we're going to do is going to hurt. It's nasty, it's invasive, and if I ever caught someone doing it I would kill them. Unfortunately, it is also the only way for me to help both of you in the four or so days we have before we hit Saren's little complex on Virmire."

For his part, Harry looked like he wasn't into whatever he was about to do.

He took his wand from a sheath on his wrist, and gave it a wave and poke at the space between the three of them and their audience. He moved to just a few feet in front of Benezia and the Rachni, before swishing his wand again and conjuring a seat for himself.

"The quickest way to teach your mind to defend itself against intrusion and influence sucks. Its how I was first taught. A man that hated me and hated my father tried to use this very method, but instead of properly teaching me he used the opportunity to make me relive all of my most shameful and painful memories at once."

Harry shook his head to rid himself of those memories. Everyone involved was long dead. Eight pairs of eyes followed him, seven looked thoughtful and the eighth seemed very unsure.

"Resisting mental control," Harry nodded to the bug lady, "and rescuing yourself from mental control," a nod to the Asari, "both center around being able to recognize the difference between your thoughts and thoughts from an outside source. In order to do either one of these things you must know yourself. You must know, acknowledge, and understand everything about who you are, what makes you, you. When you have, any foreign influence will stand out and can be ignored."

"For the next four days we're gonna be here together, and we're going to delve into each of your memories. From the first time you saw your mother's face to the conversation we're having now. I'll guide you through feeling every single thing you have ever felt, it will be like it is all happening to you again, and it's probably going to be unpleasant. When you know yourself and when you understand yourself you'll each be ready."

Harry smiled at the pair, "Now who wants to go first?"

Benezia struggled against the cords holding her in her chair, prompting the Rachni queen to look in her direction. Hasty elbow movements seemed to indicate that Benezia was not eager to start, unfortunately for her the queen had no fetters and was able to point a pseudo-pod tentacle thing in her direction.

"Someone's been volunteered!"

/-/

On the other side of Harry's quick illusion ward, the collected ground team was all really unsure what was going on. Potter mentions his plan is going to hurt, and then... this?

No one spoke for twenty straight minutes, not even Joker, which was surprising given that Tali's alerts on the recording equipment in the cargo bay activated several times, indicating he was aware of what was going on.

At the end of the first hour, Wrex and Jane made use of Harry's card synthesis program again, flash forming a deck and getting into a game of Skyllian five. Garrus, Tali, and Kaiden wanted to join in, but couldn't bring themselves to look away from their captain.

When the game picked up and Jane began cursing her luck, Kaiden was finally moved to comment, "Has Potter actually been teaching a Rachni to juggle for the last hour and a half?"

Garrus grunted and said, "Well it's got the six... arms?"

"Can't be easy," Kaiden agreed.

Tali just sighed.

/-/

**Hades Gamma cluster, Antaeus system, Static discharge orbit over Ageko, SSV Normandy – 06.10.2183**

Harry leaned back in his chair, breaking eye contact again with Benezia, who still sat in front of him. They'd only had about sixteen hours' worth of sessions total, and it was nearing the end of the shipboard 'day'. A bit of a blush burned on his face, and for at least a moment Harry couldn't bring himself to make eye contact with his captive.

In her seat across from him, Benezia looked very hot and bothered. She shifted in her seat constantly and seemed very annoyed that whatever memory they had been viewing ended so quickly.

"I... err... wow."

Benezia seemed to agree from behind her bindings and gag. All of which only made Harry blush a little harder given what he had just seen.

"Given a real choice, I would never force you to do this. I hope you realize it. If you could do this on your own, I would work a little of my voodoo to get you extra time and just leave you to it, but this is the only way we can get you free."

The matriarch seemed to hear his words, and use them as focus to calm down. Her shifting noticeably stopped and the way her eyes sought his moved from frenzied to contemplative.

"You're starting to see it, aren't you? It's always there, just at the edge of your vision. We'll, err, dive back in, in a second, but try and concentrate on how it changes your memory where it touches it, alright?"

Harry had brought Benezia to a point where she probably didn't need to be gagged anymore, she was almost in control of herself, but if he was going to be honest with himself, He did _not_ want her commentary on what they were seeing.

"I feel obligated to say, you have amazing taste in women."

Benezia blushed very slightly, and lightly nodded her agreement.

"_Legillimens_."

...

From beside the pair, the Rachni queen appeared rather introspective. The waves of desire, shame, and lust she was getting off the other two did not translate well into an insectoid context.

She felt a little left out.

/-/

Garrus and Kaiden were again parked on the other side of Harry's illusion ward. Almost everyone else had given up on the spectacle, but neither could quite bring themselves to. Garrus hadn't calibrated the slightest thing in over a day, which alone spoke of how deep his curiosity ran.

Kaiden broke the silence that had reigned for over an hour, "I was surprised when Harry could do seven balls, but the Rachni doing seven knives?"

"Kinda blows Potter out of the water."

Kaiden hummed his agreement.

After another long moment Garrus spoke up, "Should we be worried that Potter is activating those grenades?"

"Eh."

/-/

**Attican Beta cluster, Hercules system, Static discharge orbit over Zatorus, SSV Normandy – 06.12.2183**

Benezia perched gracefully on a very alien looking seat (how in the hell did all those angles work?) across from Harry. At his other side the Rachni queen lay on an even more alien looking couch. In fairness, they were aliens so it made at least a bit of sense, but Harry couldn't help but feel the pair were each showing off to the other.

The trio was deep within the recesses of Harry's mind, as that was probably the only place any being could talk to a Rachni and not have to suffer the indignity of possession. Benezia and the queen were both discussing the finer points of how differences in biology lead to philosophical differences between species.

Collectivism versus individualism, the existence of 'telepathy' as a defining feature of a species' development. All kinds of complicated and annoying things like that.

Harry was not involved.

Minutes of real time before, Harry finished his work with the Rachni queen, managing to teach her a barebones version of occlumency that would safeguard her in the future from this infamous 'sour yellow note'. Something Harry now recognized as a defining tactical precept of the Reapers.

Overall, teaching the Rachni's still young mind to defend itself from intrusion was a simple task and held only a few surprises. Benezia, on the other hand, had been a goldmine of information. She had revealed the details of the Asari-cuttlefish dreadnought, Sovereign, and when she did so Harry could feel the mind control from her memories. Thankfully it wasn't infectious, it couldn't get to him through her, but it was on par with a full-fledged dark lord's _imperius_, but on a much larger scale. Which was scary as all hell.

With Benezia's memories Harry knew the will of Sovereign, and as such he was really not looking forward to his next check-in with the council. Finding out that the Citadel was actually a mass relay intended to receive transit from the space between galaxies was one thing, learning that the invasion depended on the apparent whim of a bunch of enigmatic and suicidal bug people on the Citadel was another entirely.

The conduit's receiving end needed to be moved, like immediately, and to the center of a sun. A survey fleet needed to be sent to every single system the Rachni knew of and they didn't, again, like immediately. On top of all of it though, they needed to scour the galaxy for more of this Reaper tech, and they needed to blast, burn, and vaporize it wherever it was found. Moving the galactic economy to a war footing wouldn't hurt, intense research into the final days of the Protheans was a good idea, and every single Geth runtime in existence needed to be deleted. Harry didn't mind being the bearer of bad news, Merlin only knew how much experience he had with it, but doom on a scale above planetary wasn't something he was used to yet.

Somehow, Harry wasn't bothered by any of it at the moment though.

In fact, Harry interrupted the conversation between the two aliens in front of him to voice the only real concern he did have, a solid remnant of the time he spent in the Queen's mind.

"I've never been aroused by opera before. Wow."

The two others looked at Harry, completely deadpan. Harry continued to stare off into the distance, trying to figure out if being the most turned on he had ever been in his life by a bug queen's opera meant something, and the two quickly returned to their conversation.

[A/N]: Next time on Getting Too Old For This: The crew assaults Virmire from inside a trash can, Wrex attempts to mate with a pod crab (killing it in the process), and it's revealed that the Reapers are huge fans of H.P. Lovecraft.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

[A/N]: I LIVE! I live. I'm alive. Sorry for the wait between chapters, but if I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm not that sorry and it's not going to get any better. School is back in session, dramatically complicating my schedule, on top of which I have a driving desire to eat and get drunk from time to time, so I also have a job to pay for those urges.

Here is whats going to happen for the next month or two. I'm going to very nearly stop writing new shit, and instead I'm going to go through this story and the other I have in progress to actually edit them and make sure all my ducks are in a row. I'm about 85% certain that you guys don't get emails when I update chapters, so I guess just check back in like a month, and re-read from chapter one, things will hopefully make more sense and be a bit more well written.

**Sentry Omega cluster, Hoc system, close proximity of Relay, SSV Normandy – 06.12.2183**

The Normandy left the mass free corridor projected by the relay in the Attican Beta cluster with FTL travel's characteristic blue 'optical boom'. Joker had worked his own personal brand of magic to drop them inside a thousand kilometers of their target, Harry idly noted that his average displacements had gone down with the gift of a lifetime's platinum pass to a certain corporation's products.

The frigate's sensor suite kicked into high gear as soon as they hit normal space in the Hoc system, millions of credits and years of research and development showed the bridge crew every visible thermal, electronic, and gravimetric reading inside the local heliopause.

Oh the things they saw.

For what should have been an empty planet in a politically unstable sector, not only was there a lot of traffic in Orbit, but also impressive amount of debris. Standard equatorial orbits were crowded with blasted shuttle parts, and most of the LaGrange points in the system were similarly crowded with busted sensor arrays.

Something had entered the system hot, and with few reservations about the use of force.

Benezia had been both peeved and relieved to be freed from Sovereign's mental control, so in the end (after swearing vengeance against Harry for his transgressions) she had been happy to share the details she had on the facility.

It hadn't looked good.

Virmire was a biological research lab focused on developing a cure for the Krogan genophage and the study of what Benezia now understood to be the reaper's mind control. Saren apparently being in possession of a much clearer picture of what his cause was than what he had relayed to his followers. The more Harry learned about the guy, the more glad he was that he incinerated first and just didn't stop to ask questions.

In any case, the labs had security designed by thinking machine super computers on top of what was easily the largest single concentration of Krogan off Tuchanka. It _would _have been a very tough nut to crack, had it not had a very familiar shape literally striding across it.

Visual and gravimetric data from the target indicated both a sky full of anti-aircraft fire and a dreadnought shaped like an Asari designed vessel went and did the nasty with a cephalopod.

Sovereign.

And it was raining fire down on the facility and nearly all the surrounding territory like it was a gaunt figure astride a pale horse. They had expected a lot of things, but this one was kind of a surprise, also the whole death thing was really Harry's shtick.

More information from the sensors flooded in, was refined, and then displayed in the massive holo-tank where the galaxy map usually lay. Harry was back in his Shatner pose above the map, staring down at it thoughtfully. At least that was what it looked like.

Harry loved a bit of showmanship, but was at his core a very lazy man. He was actually disillusioned and perched on a stool, sipping a smoothie. The crew did deserve the effort he was too lazy to physically provide.

Harry/Shatner pressed a stud in the Panel in front of him, opening a line to the cockpit, "Joker, I don't really need to tell you to engage stealth systems do I? Bring us into a high orbit over the planet, away from the spaceship the size of a building if you please.

There was a second of silence before the regular vibrations of the ship changed slightly, and a tight voice returned over the comm, "On it boss."

The illusory Harry paused before hitting another stud on the panel, "Keep an eye out everyone, anything big explodes or anything significant changes, alert me," he pressed his button, "Ground team to comm room, ground team to comm room."

Real Harry stood, vanishing the remains of his smoothie and his stool, before the fake one moved to mesh perfectly with him in how he stood. Harry canceled his illusion and made himself visible, leaving the universe with only a single insane master of death. Whistling a jaunty tune, he made his way to meet his crew.

Jane and Benezia were already in the circular room, standing before the large holo display at the end of the room and speaking in hushed tones. On the screen in front of them were every picture and video they had of Sovereign. The aged Asari had been on board a handful of times, and appeared to be discussing tactical weaknesses of the dreadnought. Harry just took a seat and watched two beautiful and intelligent women discuss military action like the dirty old man he was, two hundred years having taught him to both take all the time for himself that he could in a time of war, and that anything was a sexual euphemism if one tried hard enough. Explosive breaching at the airlock indeed.

Richard 'Leroy' Jenkins, Kaiden Alenko, Ashley Williams, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Garrus Vakarian, and Urdnot Wrex all slowly filtered into the room, and when they were all seated Harry started in with his usual aplomb.

"I've got good news and bad news. Who wants what first?"

Benezia twitched at the phrase and Harry suppressed a grin. Total Potter exposure for the crew was currently at ten days, so they had grown to expect oddities but were still confused by his briefing style.

Silence reigned.

"Okay then! Good news first, thanks to our new friend in blue over here," Benezia inclined her head, "we have the full layout of the lab complex, and while we don't know exactly what defenses the Geth have embedded after the fact, Benezia did manage to get us access to the logistic records the Geth left from their procurement, so we can take some excellent guesses. Also my guess is that at least some of you heard on the way in, but in case you did not, the massive ship we encountered briefly on Eden Prime is also here, and is in the process of razing the base."

Harry smiled.

"In case any of you were confused, that was the good news."

Ashley looked like she wanted to interject something, even going as far as leaning forward, before evidently remembering who was giving the briefing and thinking better of it.

"The bad news is a lot more fun. That ship out there stomping around is a Reaper. It's a single Reaper, a single omnicidal AI inside the shell of a ship the entire galactic community together would be hard pressed to replicate. It seems intent on burning down the buildings and hoping we can't get any kind of intel from it, so we probably need to get down there and figure out anything and everything we can as fast as we can. Right underneath it. You know, where it's safe."

Ashley looked vindicated for a moment (she knew the other boot was going to drop!), but then she realized what it was she was about to do and somehow the feeling of satisfaction vanished. In her stead Tali seemed to be the one with the question.

"If that is a facility that belonged to it, why is this reaper fighting its own people down there? Why wouldn't they just board it and move on?"

Harry looked to Wrex and his smile slackened somewhat, "That's actually part two of the bad news. The reason why that facility isn't already just dust is the fact that there is something in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred Krogan down there, sitting on top of what Saren's files claim is a cure for the genophage."

The Krogan sat bolt upright.

"A cure? For the genophage?"

"Indeed, my blood thirsty friend. Before you get all excited, I want you to think this through. This is a cure devised by a Turian extremist, and let be honest for a moment here, a Turian megalomaniac, who was attempting to get all sentient life in the galaxy harvested by agents of the big-ass ship down there. It might be a cure, but do you think for a second that it doesn't have a massive kill switch or some kind of terrifying mind control built into it?"

Wrex's eyes moved back and forth rapidly, his hands clutching at nothing and his breathing audibly getting faster. It took a lot for an apex predator to look like a rabbit being circled by a hawk, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

Everyone in the room watched as the Krogan battlemaster attempted to deal with what was clearly a huge emotional trauma, and of them only Harry and Benezia weren't wishing the ship had a more relaxed policy regarding guns leaving the armory.

After a moment Wrex looked back at Harry, "We're getting it."

Harry scoffed, "Of course we are! What, you think I like genocide? I just want you to be aware that we aren't using it for a long time, and we're dropping a nuclear device in the base to kill everything that has had it used on them."

Wrex grunted, which doesn't sound like a lot, but he had something like a thousand years to learn how to fill a grunt with malice and the promise of violence, so it was a hell of a noise.

"Oh keep your quad on, you big baby. Think about it! You want a bunch of Saren controlled Krogan running around the galaxy inspiring the council to their next act of Tuchankan genocide?"

Wrex grunted again after a moment, this time with a bit more humor injected into it, and said, "I'm going to shoot you, you know that right?"

Harry stood and clapped his hands, "Sure, you can kill me when we get back."

/-/

The ground crew armored, armed, and loaded up in the mako, each waiting only for their illustrious leader. Except in the case of the ground crew's newest, oldest, and most Asari member, who had seen the sensor readings alongside Shepard and knew Potter had to have a better plan than a standard sub-orbital drop. Unless they tried it on the other side of the planet they weren't getting inside a hundred kilometers of the facility unless they did so as a fun multi-colored paste.

After a moment both the group and the individual got what they were looking for. Harry stuck his head in the hatch of the tank and with an exasperate tone asked, "What the hell are you all doing in there? I expected better of you, Jane, and Tali! Did none of you look at what's waiting for us down there?"

Tali and Jane both felt chastised for reasons they didn't understand, and moved with the group back out.

When they were all out in front of the tank again Harry stood in front of them and with a disappointed look began speaking, "Not only is there enough anti-air to knock a dreadnought out of the sky, but there is that whole Reaper standing on the facility thing to consider. I'm surprised at you all!"

Benezia looked silently at Harry expressing both a desire to be done with the lesson for the children and her belief in the fact that he had an answer for their dilemma, the assembled humans and Quarian all looked suitably abashed.

Garrus couldn't stand being upbraided like a boy forgetting the safety on his first gun, "What about Wrex!? Shouldn't he have known better!"

Harry injected even more disappointment into his expression and looked to the Turian, "Silly Garrus, Wrex is a Krogan. He knows, he just doesn't care, and when you grow a secondary nervous system to replace the one you've lost getting shot, you can afford to not care too."

Harry just shook his head and looked at the object of the discussion, "Kids these days..."

The Krogan seemed to agree, with a quiet, "Heh."

"Alright, you've all seen some of the voodoo that I do up to now, but now you get introduced to one of the more fun aspects of it. I'm going to say to you all now the four words that terrorized me all through primary school," Harry smiled widely, "Wanna feel something weird?"

With the wand he had been concealing behind his back, Harry mass transfigured each squad member into a sealed tin of potted meat. A swish and flick saw the squad rise into the air and file neatly into their improvised atmospheric re-entry vehicle. It stood just under a meter tall, was a forbidding black, and-

It was a trash can. A heavily charmed trashcan, but nonetheless a trashcan.

Harry picked it up and held it under and arm as he made his way through the ship to the airlock, whistling the tune to 'If I Only Had a Brain'. He got a few strange looks as he went through the CIC, but the command crew had all been briefed by former-captain Anderson personally to just ignore anything they saw Harry doing that did not immediately endanger the structural integrity of the ship. They chose to let it go.

When he reached the cockpit, he stopped at Joker's seat, "Hey, so I need you to point the airlock onto a ballistic course with the facility, and just cycle it for me. When we're off ship it's you and Pressly in charge, so just keep her afloat, yeah? That Reaper's ECM makes it impossible for us to actually communicate, so just keep your eyes open and keep this on or near you."

Harry Pulled a massive conch shell from a pocket that was _way _too small to actually hold it, and set it on the edge of the pilot's console. It was comically proportioned, like someone had glued an old school phonograph to a softball, but it rested easily on the edge of the holo-emitter's plastic shell.

Joker looked from the shell to the earnest face of his CO, and then back. Harry had done a lot of strange things, but he had also bought him porn, so overall Jeff was willing to give him a pass until he was willing to explain himself more fully. Sure, they were in a combat situation, but it had been a _lot_ of porn.

"Whatever you need, boss."

"Good man!"

Harry continued whistling and went into the airlock. The vibrations of the ship's hull changed pitch and frequency gently over the next minute, indicating to Harry that Joker was performing his requested course corrections. After a moment Moreau's familiar voice broke in over the speakers in the airlock.

"You want me to cycle it now? Wait, did you even have a helmet earlier?"

Harry shook his head, they always caught the details after the fact.

"Just cycle it, and Remember Lieutenant, keep that shell on you."

"Whatever you say, Boss."

The outdoor to the airlock opened quickly, shooting Harry and the trashcan he was hugging out into the void.

/-/

**Sentry Omega cluster, Hoc system, surface of planet Virmire – 06.12.2183**

Jane Shepard was on her hands and knees emptying her body of every meal she had ever eaten or would ever eat, while Jenkins stared off blankly into space and hugged his armored knees to his chest. Kaiden was the first to really recover, and actually punched Harry in the face, only to audibly his knuckles on the plating of the helmet that appeared the instant before he could make contact.

The biotic clutched his fist to his chest and shouted, "FUCK! Never do that again!" the cry of frustration seemed to drain the tension out of him, as he quieted and looked down at his fist, "...and you broke my hand."

Harry just tssked, letting his helmet fade away again. He grabbed Kaiden's hand from him and with a wave of his wand audibly knit the shattered bones. No one was comfortable with any of the bone related noises, even the Krogan wincing at the sound.

"I told you guys it would feel weird. It's like no one listens to me."

Garrus stared down at his claws and said with conviction, "I will never eat meat again."

When the group was more or less whole, at a physical level at least, He hoped, Harry began walking toward the sound of gunfire and the massive dreadnought that filled the skyline, "Bunch of babies, like they've never been temporarily Spam before."

/-/

Harry and the trashcan full of his armed friends impacted on the outskirts of the facility, surprisingly only about five hundred meters from the garage/receiving area at the west edge of the base. Joker's careful aim landing them on the opposite side of the facility from the rampaging reaper.

The route into the base was lightly defended by sets of the smaller Geth platforms. It made for a gentle re-introduction to combat for the crew, who all seemed to still be freaked out by their temporary transformations.

All of the ground leading into was man accessible at best, being as it was frequently knee deep in seawater and limited by massive rock formations. Harry figured it had to have been mostly supplied by air, especially given the drone landing platforms that they skirted to the north. The entire area seemed like Saren was thinking more about how his top of the line genetic engineering facility would look, and less about whether or not it would need new foundations inside of five years.

Harry found himself thinking derisively about 'kids these days' for the second time in as many hours while he disrupted Geth sniper platform optics with high velocity armor piercing shots.

The team breached and cleared the garage quickly, entering the facility proper. Garage led to warehouse, warehouse led to maintenance bay, and maintenance bay to the security offices of the base. From there the team had quick access to the lab facility and the hard-wired defense functions of the base.

Sensors showed almost every available Geth platform and nearly every foot-mobile Krogan on the extreme east of the base, all fighting underneath the reaper ship which was delivering starship-grade fire support from a very up close and personal perspective. The rebellion of Saren's Krogan (there was a joke in there, but Wrex had already threatened to shoot Harry so he wasn't going to try his luck) against their machine overlord provided the perfect distraction for the team to sneak inside the base, and they took full advantage of it.

Harry would have felt bad if he weren't also there to murder every one of them, the plans for which he was still in the process of developing. Well, the escape plans. It wasn't the blowing them up that was complicated, it was surviving it that was tricky.

The labs contained an impressive amount of genetic sequencing machinery, alongside a truly disturbing number of vivisected Krogan bodies. Whoever was running the tests had put subjects on ice in what looked like the middle of being dissected, which was horrifying on a level Harry hadn't seen since his time in the Aurors. The team could each now reliably say they knew what the inside of a Krogan womb looked like, which was pretty fucked by anyone's standards.

Saren's contracts for his scientific personnel could have used much more stringent morality clauses, but in the end Harry supposed it did kind of come with the 'mad science' territory.

He winced and shivered.

Throughout the lab Wrex went immediately to the consoles, his rage over the bodies and enthusiasm for the data in the lab's systems overwhelming both his focus on the fight against lab personnel, and his awareness of just how unqualified he was in the technical sphere. His omni-tool was just a step above civilian grade, and the Geth had already come through on Sovereign's orders to delete what they could of the data which left him in the lurch.

He had two Saving graces, however.

First, the Krogan on site had insisted on solid state back-ups instead of the galactic standard optical storage discs, so when the Geth came through to wipe data their efforts were less effective, even physically destructive methods.

Second, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya was behind him, chuckling at his efforts and in an attempt to ward off the gruesome sights in the lab. While the rest of the team shot scientists and partially dissected Krogan husks, she used her Potter Mark I to scan, defragment, and reconstruct nearly every bit of 'lost' data. Wrex and Harry were each forwarded what she got, before she ejected and destroyed the temporary OSD storage she held the data on.

The Krogan got a copy because she didn't want to get shot, Harry got a copy because he was the captain, and she made sure she did not have a copy because, well, she didn't want to get shot. Data even hinting at a cure to the Genophage seemed like a great way to find one's self on the wrong end of a STG firing squad regardless of spectre status, and that was a problem for captains and Krogan, not engineers.

By the time the squad had been planetside for two hours they collectively added ninety seven Geth platforms and seventeen Krogan to their Kill Count, and they uncovered what a talented genetic biologist could turn into a cure for the genophage, given a few years anyway. Beyond the genophage cure Tali was able to pull terabytes of additional encrypted data that would require later analysis. Harry could only speculate on what else they were getting, but any more information on what Saren had done in preparation of the coming reaper invasion would help.

Overall, that left the ground crew in the enviable position of having accomplished all of their objectives save one: total destruction of the facility and everyone in it.

The team holed up in the lab building closest to the center of the facility, but still outside the skirmish lines of the Geth and Krogan. The reaper was firing some kind of cannon that left huge volumes of what appeared to be a liquid slurry of tungsten and uranium, which made it both an appalling weapon, and an excellent way to block off hallways. The rapidly cooling metal blocked off huge sections of the facility, where it hadn't simply ripped through the building's superstructure, effectively isolating the Normandy-s ground contingent from the fighting.

Garrus set up a small perimeter with Kaiden, Jenkins, Williams, and Tali, while the rest of the team huddled around Harry whose plan they had not yet been briefed on. It almost didn't bear mentioning that they weren't thrilled when he let them in on it.

Shepard, as Harry's designated handler, was given first dibs on expressing her discontent.

"I'm sorry, you want to what?"

Harry paused for a moment in his work, and lovingly patted the casing of the bomb he was assembling, "WE," he said with emphasis, "are going to detonate a roughly hundred megaton bomb, easily clearing the base and hopefully hurting the reaper," his expression clouded for a moment as he looked back into the exposed interior where his omni tool was still hard at work flash forming components, "not too sure on the reaper though..."

Wrex was stuck in a short loop of looking from Harry, to his omni-tool, laughing a bit, and then repeating. He would be no help.

Benezia looked as if she wanted to protest, and Tali looked like she was doubting herself as much as she was her captain.

Shepard inclined her head to the Asari, a gesture which artfully combined a plea for help and recognition of her turn to try and stem the madness.

"One is almost forced to ask, do you intend for us to die alongside the Geth and Krogan here? Unless you have a shuttle hidden in your pockets somewhere, or some means of ensuring the Normandy is not shot out of the air by the reaper you so casually mentioned, it seems we are rather short of transportation at the moment."

Harry waved her off with a hand still holding a screwdriver, "I've survived nuclear explosions before, I'll survive them again, we don't have to worry about that."

As much as the casual dismissal of the explosive force of one hundred million tons of TNT was interesting, the three women were somehow not comforted. Tali took her turn at the wheel.

"I'm not a politician, but isn't there some kind of ban on fission weapons being used on garden worlds?"

Harry's voice echoed hollowly from the inside of the device, "Eh, sort of. I'm a spectre though, so it's not like we can't get away with it."

The ladies seemed more troubled than they were before they voiced their objections as harry continued, "Virmire here may be a garden world, but we're fairly deep in the Traverse. No one develops out here so at worst I'll get a slap on the wrist, especially since we're," Harry's use of air quotes for his audience while his head was buried inside a bomb made less sense that his message, " 'Destroying a cure for the genophage'."

Wrex's attention finally caught on the conversation, his contribution more threat than statement, "But we're not."

Harry looked back up from his work, "Of course we're not! But for the love of god, no one can say anything even remotely like that or we're in deeper shit than I can reliably pull us out of. The genophage is an extinction level event for the Krogan, and anyone that says otherwise is an idiot. I can't let that stand. That said," Harry leaned on his device and pointed his screwdriver at the Krogan, "you and I are going to have a talk about the hows and whys of its use."

Wrex looked at Harry with murder in his eyes, before realizing that the object of his rage was casually supporting himself on the casing of a nuclear device he had made in less than thirty minutes. He grunted and nodded his head once.

"Good. Now get everyone in here and we'll start this show."

Harry directed his only mildly terrified crew to all stand next to each other inside a circle he used his omni-tool to laser etch into the ceramacrete floor. Arcane looking symbols that none of the collected fighters could identify quickly lined the circle, forming a half-meter thick layer of cuneiform and curving pictograms.

Harry made a much smaller version surrounding his bomb, before stepping inside the circle next to his crew and chanting in old earth Gaelic. As the chant finished a dome of pulsing pink energy flowed up from the edges of the circle, enclosing the crew, who each looked askance at one another and their fearless leader.

Harry was blind to their apprehension, instead removing a small conch shell from a pocket on his thigh and in a move that confused everyone around him, holding it to his ear and calling out, "Joker, do you read?"

Jane caught the eyes of the rest of the human contingent as well as Garrus, and using deliberate eye and hand movements attempted to communicate a rising desire to mutiny against the clearly insane person that was nominally responsible for leading them.

Jenkins, Alenko, and Vakarian were all immediately on board, each turning to confront Williams, when a tinny voice issued forth from the sea shell in Harry's hand.

"Umm, I read you boss. Do... do I just talk into the hole, or...?"

"Just listen Joker, we're about to light the bomb off on our position, when the reaper leaves the planet's surface and goes for the relay, I need you to get into a geosynch orbit directly over top of us and pressurize the airlock. Just say something when you get there."

The four prospective mutineers suspended their efforts for a moment to look at the shell in Harry's hand as though it were radioactive, speaking of which...

Harry turned to the others in the dome, each just inside the other's comfort zones as they tried to squeeze away from the pulsing pink walls they didn't understand, with a smile he pulled out the detonator causing six sets of eyes to widen and the seventh to close in a resigned manner.

"A wise man once said that one should not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Now I don't know about subtle, but-"

In an instant the dome of energy around them went white, a roar that resonated in each of their bones seemed to come from every direction at once, the weight of the sound pressing in on each of them uncomfortably. In the same moment it was as though someone had lit a flame beneath each of them, all of their armor systems registering a massive radiation spike across the spectrum from infrared to gamma and exotic particle. Nothing registered as lethal or even threatening, but alarms still blared as the background levels of radiation that had been there before tripled and quadrupled for just a second.

"-I can do quick to anger."

[A/N]: Next time on getting too Old for This: Wrex shoots Harry in the face, the crew of the Normandy can no longer deal with their suspension of disbelief, and the rachni queen discovers nude photos of herself on the extranet.


End file.
